The Story of The Salem Witch Trials

The Story of the Salem Witch Trials
Providing an accessible and comprehensive overview, The Story of the Salem

Witch Trials explores the events between June 10 and September 22, 1692,
when nineteen people were hanged, one was pressed to death and over 150
were jailed for practicing witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
This book explores the history of that event and provides a synthesis of the
most recent scholarship on the subject. It places the trials into the context of
the Great European Witch-Hunt and relates the events of 1692 to witch-
hunting throughout seventeenth-century New England. Now in a third edition,
this book has been updated to include an expanded section on the European
origins of witch-hunts, an updated and expanded epilogue (which discusses the
witch-hunts, real and imagined, historical and cultural, since 1692), and an
extensive bibliography.
This complex and difficult subject is covered in a uniquely accessible manner
that captures all the drama that surrounded the Salem witch trials. From
beginning to end, the reader is carried along by the author’s powerful narration
and mastery of the subject. While covering the subject in impressive detail,
Bryan Le Beau maintains a broad perspective on the events and, wherever
possible, lets the historical characters speak for themselves. Le Beau highlights
the decisions made by individuals responsible for the trials that helped turn
what might have been a minor event into a crisis that has held the imagination
of students of American history. This third edition of The Story of the Salem
Witch Trials is essential for students and scholars alike who are interested in
women’s and gender history, colonial American history, and early modern
history.
Bryan F. Le Beau, Ph.D. is the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Pro-
fessor of History from the University of Saint Mary, retired. He is the author of
several books on American cultural and religious history, including: A History
of Religion in America (2 vols., 2018).
“Bryan Le Beau’s third edition of The Story of the Salem Witch Trials is a
thoughtful, comprehensive account of an event that continues to fascinate both
historians and the general public. Le Beau offers readers a judicious synthesis of
the best interpretations of Salem’s witchcraft scare, but he nevertheless refuses
to forget the importance of the individuals who made the decisions that led to
Salem’s conflict with ‘the Devil.’ It is narrative history at its best.”
Sheila Skemp Clare, Marquette Professor of American History Emerita,
University of Mississippi
“Bryan Le Beau’s exploration of the Salem Witch-Hunt is a highly accessible

book that puts the hysteria that gripped eastern Massachusetts in 1692 and 1693
into a broader context that makes the event more than a simple eruption of
medievalism in early Anglo-America. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials serves
as an excellent gateway leading into a complex time and place in American
history that deserves sustained analysis.”
John Howard Smith, Professor of History, Texas A & M
University-Commerce
“The third edition of Bryan Le Beau’s book serves as a most useful guidebook
and impartial arbiter of the voluminous literature and conflicting theories sur-
rounding the Salem Witch Trials. Le Beau has done us a great service by keeping
abreast of the scads of new research that has been done over the past decade or
so. His contextual approach—giving us the necessary European and Colonial
backgrounds—is most welcome.”
Elijah Siegler, Professor of Religious Studies, College of Charleston
The Story of the Salem
Witch Trials
“We Walked in Clouds and Could Not
See Our Way”
Third Edition
Bryan F. Le Beau
Designed cover image: Salem Witchcraft Museum, Massachusetts, New
England, USA. Scene showing hanging of George Burroughs, accused of
witchcraft © David Lyons/Alamy Stock Photo
Third edition published
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© 2023 Bryan F. Le Beau
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been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
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without intent to infringe.
[First edition published by Pearson Education 1997]
[Second edition published by Routledge 2009]
ISBN: 978-0-367-63777-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-62717-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-12063-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636
Typeset in Sabon
by Taylor & Francis Books
To John Philip English
Contents
List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgements ix
Introduction to the Third Edition 1

1 “A Biography of a Terrible but Perfectly Normal Superstition” 6
2 “Having Familiarity with the Devil” 31
3 “The Evil Hand” Is upon Them 61
4 “Is Not This a Brand Plucked from the Burning?” 87
5 “If They Are Let Alone We Should All Be Devils and Witches” 111
6 “God Will Deliver Us Out of the Hands of Unmerciful Men” 139
7 “God Will Give You Blood to Drink” 161
8 “What a Sad Thing It Is to See Eight Firebrands of Hell Hanging
There” 182
9 “It Were Better That Ten Suspected Witches Should Escape,
Than That One Innocent Person Should Be Condemned” 203
10 “Ruined in the Mistaken Management of the Terrible Affair
Called Witchcraft” 227
Epilogue 255
Appendix 264
Bibliography 270
Index 279
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Three witches burned alive from a German Broadside, c.1555.
In Europe, convicted witches were often burned alive. This
woodcut shows the execution of three people, with a demon
withdrawing backwards from the mouth of one of the victims 13
3.1 Photograph of a portrait of Samuel Parris, a central figure in
the Salem witch trials 67
3.2 A painting by T. H. Matteson, titled Examination of a
Witch, 1855 81
10.1 Photograph of a portrait of Cotton Mather (1663–1728), an
important figure in the Salem witch trials 229
Maps
3.1 The geography of witchcraft: Salem village, 1692 72
4.1 Map based on Salem Village Map 1692 in Salem Witchcraft
(1867) by Charles W. Upham 90
Acknowledgements
Any writer on the Salem witch trials is deeply indebted to the large number
of historians who have contributed so much to our understanding of the
event. They are too numerous to list, but they are duly referenced in the
book, and I thank them.
In the writing of the first and second editions of this history, I was particu-
larly indebted to the helpful suggestions of David Katzman, Professor of
American Studies at the University of Kansas; Steven Watts, Professor of His-
tory at the University of Missouri; Joyce Goodfriend, Professor of History at
the University of Denver; Ronald Johnson, Professor of History at Georgetown
University; James Farrell, Professor of History at St. Olaf College; Sheila
Skemp, Professor of History at the University of Mississippi; Maurice
Crouse, Professor of History at the University of Memphis; and Glenn
Linden, Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University.
For this third edition, I am grateful for the reviews offered by Kevin Good-
ing, Assistant Professor of History in the Honors College at West Virginia
University, and John Howard Smith, Professor of History at Texas A&M
University-Commerce.
For all three editions, I continue to be indebted to the librarians at the
James Duncan Phillips Library of the Peabody and Essex Museum, and to
Chris English Le Beau, reference librarian, for their invaluable research
assistance, and to the editorial staff at Routledge Press/Taylor & Francis for
its work in preparing this volume for publication.
Bryan F. Le Beau
Introduction to the Third Edition
Between June 10 and September 22, 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, more

than 70 people were believed to have been diabolically afflicted, resulting in
at least 169 people accused of witchcraft. Nineteen of the accused were
hanged, one was pressed to death, and over 150 others from 24 nearby
towns and villages went to jail, where at least four adults and one infant
died, and some remained until the following May. Compared to other
witch-hunts in the Western world, it was a minor affair, or as one historian
has put it, “a small incident in the history of a great superstition.”1 It was
the largest of its kind in the British colonies of North America, however,
and it has never lost its grip on either the popular or scholarly imagination.
Historians often protest that too much time has been spent and too many
pages have been written on the Salem witch trials, but they nevertheless
continue to fill library shelves with books on the subject and to engage in
sometimes heated debate over its causes. There is no indication that any of
this is likely to end soon. Nor should it, as there is more to be learned about
this episode, which remains one of the most interesting, indeed dramatic, as
well as important episodes in American history. We continue to wonder
how such a tragic event could have ever occurred and continue to reoccur
even after we stopped believing in witches.
It is impossible to review all of the answers historians have offered to this
question. The most persuasive have pointed to the economic, political,
social, and religious turmoil into which New England was plunged at the
end of the seventeenth century; to New Englanders’ beliefs that the turmoil
from which they suffered had resulted from their fall from grace as God’s
chosen people, thereby making them vulnerable to belief in a conspiracy of
witches and the Devil; to the impact of Indian wars that threatened the set-
tlements’ very existence; to the mistreatment of the Salem village youngsters
who first fell victim to some form of psychic, if not spiritual, affliction,
promoting uncontrollable fear on the part of some and fraud on the part of
others; to the Court’s inappropriate use of evidence in hearings for the
accused against which there was hardly any defense; to inordinate pressure
brought to bear upon the accused to confess and name their accomplices in
order to escape almost certain execution; and, finally, to the failure of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-1
2 Introduction to the Third Edition
authorities to act earlier and more decisively when serious questions were
raised regarding the conduct of the Court.
As far as possible in any single volume, this book provides a synthesis of
the major schools of thought on the Salem witch trials. It goes to consider-
able length to place the events of 1692 into historical context, both of
seventeenth-century New England and of the Great European Witch-Hunt,
which lasted some three centuries. Some readers might object to spending so
much time on events in Europe and other parts of the Americas, but without
such context, when viewed in isolation, the events of 1692 are impossible to
understand. This volume employs a narrative format, which is intended to
make the subject more accessible to the reader, to recapture some of the
drama that has held people spellbound for so long, and to underscore an
important way of looking at the event. As Larry Gragg has reminded us, to
fully appreciate what happened in 1692, we must “explore the particular
decisions made by the individuals involved and their consequences.”2 When
all other avenues of interpretation have been exhausted, we are left with the
fact that individuals and individual decisions matter and lead to yet other
decisions, for better or worse.
The story told in the following pages adds to what was presented in the
first and second editions. For the most part, however, the narrative unfolds
in much the same way with the same cast of characters. There are some
significant differences, however, in the form of additions, deletions, and
corrections based on considerable new research that has been done over the
past ten years. That research has produced new information and corrected
several errors that have crept into the transcription of various original
documents. Of particular importance is Bernard Rosenthal’s edited Records
of the Salem Witch-Hunt, which is now the most comprehensive and
authoritative single collection of documents. Nearly all documentary refer-
ences made in this edition have been rewritten so as to be compatible with
Rosenthal’s collection.3
Chapter 1 of this book provides a brief history of European witchcraft. It
seeks its origins in pagan antiquity and in the perspective Christians developed
about the Devil during the first centuries of Christianity’s formation. It shows
that European witchcraft was mostly a creation of the early modern period,
or from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, however, and that it
was in this period that the practice of witchcraft came to be feared, as well as
heretical and threatening to church and state. The concluding pages of
Chapter 1 focus on witch-hunts in England, in reference to which the most
direct comparisons can be made to developments in New England.
Chapter 2 narrows our focus to seventeenth-century America. After some
brief allusions to the fate of supposed witches in the Spanish, French, and
Dutch, as well as other British, colonies, it discusses the treatment of wit-
ches in New England. Two points are made. First, that what was commonly
believed to be witchcraft was practiced in seventeenth-century New Eng-
land, as it was elsewhere in the Western world. Second, although what
happened in 1692 far exceeded anything that occurred earlier in New England,
there were precedents for the Salem witch trials. The chapter concludes with
some discussion of those precedents, as well as the state of affairs in the
second half of the seventeenth century, which led colonists to conclude that
they were the victims of diabolical assault.
Chapter 3 discusses the more specific origins of the Salem witch trials. It
begins by exploring the difficulties Salem village faced in the closing decades
of the seventeenth century. It explains the problems the Reverend Samuel
Parris had with his congregation and community, and the goings-on in his
home during the winter of 1691–1692, which sparked the flames that con-
sumed Salem village. It concludes with an account of the initial terrors of
the young women of Salem village and the first charges of witchcraft
brought against the most likely suspects.
Chapters 4–6 provide an overview of the principal arrests and preliminary
examinations of those taken into custody before the Salem town magistrates.
They show how what might have been just another local and limited scare,
similar to the dozens that had preceded it in seventeenth-century New England,
became the region’s largest witch-hunt. Emphasized are key hearings, major
developments, decisive decisions, and important turning points. Shown is how
those charged by the young girls and other accusers came increasingly from
higher rungs on the social ladder. Included for comparative purposes, Chapter
6 contains an account of developments in Andover, Massachusetts, the site of
the single largest witch-hunt outside Salem.
Chapters 7–9 cover what were actually the Salem witch trials. It is at this
juncture in the story that, although the preliminary hearings continued, the
Court of Oyer and Terminer took center stage. Chapter 7 shows how Wil-
liam Phips, the recently appointed Royal Governor of Massachusetts,
established the Court of Oyer and Terminer and charged it with hearing
those cases that had been brought against suspected witches by the Salem
magistrates. A substantial sampling of those trials follows in Chapter 8, as
well as an account of an important shift in mood in September and the
confessions that proved problematic. Chapter 9 provides an explanation for
the Court’s demise in October 1692. It shows how a newly appointed court,
although constituted almost entirely of the same judges, was led by different
rules of procedure from an unrelenting record of conviction to a nearly
complete string of acquittals. It discusses the steps Governor Phips took to
end the trials and to release the remaining prisoners from jail, and it con-
cludes with some consideration of the commonly voiced charges brought
against the Court of Oyer and Terminer and the afflicted for the role they
played in the trials.
Chapter 10 describes the aftermath of the Salem witch trials, the wreckage
strewn in their wake, and the attempts taken to make amends. It considers
the fate of Salem village and its struggle to heal itself; the recantations that
were offered by some, but not all, of those responsible for what had hap-
pened; and the attempts made by the convicted and their families to settle
4 Introduction to the Third Edition
outstanding legal and financial matters. As this chapter suggests, Salem’s
ordeal did not end with the adjourning of the Court.
Finally, a brief epilogue provides some perspective on witch-hunts after
the Salem witch trials. It attempts to explain the rapid decline in the number
of trials in Europe and New England after 1692, as well as reasons for the
growing disbelief in witches. It concludes with some remarks about the
continued popularity among Americans of the Salem witch trials and the
parallels drawn by some between the Salem witch trials and what appear to
be regularly occurring “witch-hunts” in the United States ever since.
Two final points should be made concerning the use of language in the
text. First, the author has made a concerted effort to let the actors in this
drama speak for themselves. Wherever possible, they are either quoted
directly from the record or carefully paraphrased in order to retain the
flavor of their remarks. Slight adjustments in spelling and punctuation have
been made in order to render the remarks more accessible to the modern
reader and to provide a consistency where it is generally lacking. Typically
for their time, the records of the Salem witch trials are inconsistent in both.
Second, the author has chosen to use the words “possession” and “affliction”
to describe different forms of the phenomenon of witchcraft. Various historians
have reminded us that currently popular mixed usage confuses the point that
for people in the seventeenth century, the two were not the same.4 In simplest
terms, seventeenth-century believers identified the victims of witchcraft as being
either possessed or afflicted (alternately bewitched). The possessed’s thoughts
and actions, it was believed, were directly controlled by the Devil. In the case of
the afflicted, demonic power was mediated by a witch. The possessed, it was
assumed, had brought about their possession, or opened themselves up to it, by
certain wicked deeds. The afflicted were innocent victims. And if the possessed
could be cured, it would be by prayer, whereas the afflicted could be healed
only by identifying and eliminating the offending witch or witches.
During the Great European Witch-Hunt, there were comparatively few
cases diagnosed as possession, but where such diagnoses were reached the
search for cause ended. Much more common, no doubt supported by those
closest to the victims, were cases of affliction. Suspicions of affliction usually
elicited two responses on the part of civil and clerical leaders: identification
and elimination of one or more witches believed to be responsible for the
affliction; and, especially in large-scale witch-hunts, soul searching as to why
God had allowed the Devil to afflict, or assault, the innocent party or par-
ties, or even the community. As David Harley has pointed out, if the first
people who exhibited signs of diabolical influence in Salem village in the
early months of 1692 had been diagnosed as possessed, the course of events
would have been quite different.5 But that was not the case.
Finally, as this book is intended in part to lead its readers to the further
study of the Salem witch trials, it includes a comprehensive list of endnotes
and bibliography, as well as an Appendix listing those accused of witchcraft
in the Salem witch trials and their fate.
Notes
1 Incomplete trial records preclude any exact accounting of those charged in 1692.
See: John Demos, “Underlying Themes in the Witchcraft of Seventeenth Century
New England,” American Historical Review, 75 (June 1970): 1311; and Emerson
W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 11, 304 note 10.
2 Larry Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis (New York: Praeger, 1992), 213.
3 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, ed. Bernard Rosenthal (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2014).
4 Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts
(Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 62, 66.
5 David Harley, “Explaining Salem: Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnosis of
Possession,” American Historical Review, 101 (April 1996): 327.
1 “A Biography of a Terrible but
Perfectly Normal Superstition”
The people of Salem believed in witches. It is a simple proposition, some-

times difficult for the modern mind to accept, but it is essential for our
understanding of what happened in 1692. What they believed was part of a
complex tradition, commonly referred to as European witchcraft, which had
been formulated two centuries earlier. As George Lyman Kittredge has
written, what happened in Salem in 1692 was neither an aberration nor an
isolated event: it was “a mere incident, [a] brief and transitory episode in the
biography of a terrible, but perfectly normal superstition.”1
Today, the term “witchcraft” encompasses a wide variety of phenomena. In
the seventeenth-century West, however, it meant something quite specific. The
word witchcraft was derived from the Old English verb wiccian, which referred
to the art of bewitching, casting spells, or manipulating the forces of nature in
any supernatural way. By the fifteenth century, however, religious and civil
leaders came to insist that such activities were not possible without the assis-
tance of the Devil. When that association was made, the stage was set for the
massive witch-hunts that shook the Western world for nearly three centuries.2
The Origins of European Witchcraft

The people of seventeenth-century Europe pictured witches, mostly women,
as rising from their beds in the dark of the night to attend their Sabbat, the
witches’ version of the Christian Sabbath ceremony, presided over by the
Devil. Those who lived nearby went on foot; others flew on animals,
brooms, or stools to cellars, caves, or isolated fields. If neophytes were pre-
sent, they began with an initiation ceremony, wherein the Devil obliged
initiates to keep the secrets of the cult, sign his book, and renounce their
Christian faith, sealing their apostasy by stamping or excreting on a crucifix
and expressing their adoration for their new master by kissing his buttocks.
Following the initiation, all of those assembled enacted a parody of the
eucharistic feast – eating, drinking, and offering to the Devil the bodies of
infants, usually provided by those recently initiated into the cult of the
Devil. When the ceremony ended, the torches were extinguished and all
engaged in a promiscuous orgy, at the completion of which the witches took
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-2
“A Biography of a Terrible but Perfectly Normal Superstition” 7
ritual leave of their master and returned home to their unsuspecting families,
friends, and neighbors.
It took fifteen hundred years to construct this image, or what is referred
to as the “cumulative concept of witchcraft,” drawing upon several different
sources. The first images came from the ancient world where, for example,
several of the most terrible of Sumerian, Hebrew, and Greco-Roman
demons were described as frigid, barren female spirits with wings and
taloned hands and feet. Often accompanied by serpents, such creatures
swept shrieking through the night, seducing sleeping men or drinking their
blood, and attacking sleeping children and their mothers or nurses.3
Greco-Roman sorcerers, mostly women it was believed, met at night in
isolated places, in caves or deserted fields, where they tore apart and devoured
black lambs and clawed the ground with their taloned fingers, evoking spirits
of the underworld. Usually, they were led by a male priest and the image of a
dark, shaggy, and horned goat, the symbol of fertility, in rituals that included
wine-drinking, ecstatic dancing, and animal sacrifice. And although at first,
they were seen as sources of either good or evil, in time they became almost
exclusively associated with the powers of darkness.4
Belief in Satan (from the Hebrew) or the Devil (from the Greek) as the
sole source of evil on earth, however, is largely a Christian phenomenon.
The Hebrew Bible took for granted the existence of malevolent supernatural
beings. It identified them as “the satans,” meaning opponents or adversaries,
but they were nonetheless angelic members of God’s council to whom God
assigned the task of afflicting or testing man’s loyalty, as in the case of Job
in the Old Testament. Moreover, the satans were not independent beings;
they merely served God’s purpose.5
This classical view of evil changed at the start of the Common Era (CE),
when dissident Jews redefined Satan and his connection to the world. They
began to portray him as a more independent creature, as well as the leader
of their enemies. They identified themselves as God’s chosen people, sepa-
rate from other nations that they often considered their enemies. In the
second century before the Common Era, however, dissidents found an
enemy within their own ranks, among their fellow Jews. Those Jews who
had assumed the ways of their foreign rulers became the intimate enemy, as
opposed to the alien enemy. They were labeled apostates and charged with
having been seduced by the power of evil, the Prince of Darkness, or Satan.6
This redefinition of Satan and his identification with the intimate, as well as
the alien, enemy was adopted by those dissident Jews of the first and second
centuries who chose to follow the teachings of Jesus. Satan stood at the center
of the New Testament, wherein the kingdom of God is continually at war with
the kingdom of Satan, and Satan rules over a kingdom of darkness and gathers
to him all God’s opposition, including infidels, heretics, and sorcerers.
When the early Christians adopted that binary world and saw themselves as
the children of God, they labeled those who had rejected Christ’s teachings
as the children of the Devil.7
8 “A Biography of a Terrible but Perfectly Normal Superstition”
Two points should be made at this stage. First, it is important to note
that prior to the Great European Witch-Hunt, fear of the Devil and his
minions was kept in check by confidence in the power of the Church to
control them. Early Christians believed that the Devil’s power over men,
although great, was limited; unlike God, he was not an independent being or
eternal principle. He could not act contrary to God’s will, and perhaps more
important, he could not force men and women to sin against their will.
Those crucial limitations were badly shaken, if not lost, by the fifteenth
century. In 1667 John Milton, for one, reminded the English-speaking
world, in his epic poem Paradise Lost, that Satan, once called Lucifer, who
had been an angel in heaven, led his followers in a war against God, and
was ultimately sent with them to hell, where he sought revenge by tempting
people to do his bidding, bringing about mankind’s downfall – much as the
serpent had tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.
Second, although the foregoing points to what could be seen as two patterns
of belief in witches, the witch as outsider and the witch as insider, this book
focuses almost exclusively on the second. That is not to say that both were not
present in the Great European Witch-Hunt – Europeans hunted Jews and New
Englanders hunted Native Americans – but the second dominated the first.
Indeed, the Great European Witch-Hunt can best be explained as an attack on
insiders, or the intimate enemy. In the great majority of cases, Christians found
witches among their Christian neighbors.8
The Development of European Witchcraft

If European witchcraft employed ancient images that were largely universal,
Christianity infused those images with unique and potentially devastating
elements. Those elements were widespread in the Western world by the end
of the fourth century, but they were not fully developed until the fifteenth
century. Moreover, European witchcraft was not the product solely of that
ignorance or superstition usually associated with the common people.
Rather, it was the province, as well, of the literate of both the ecclesiastical
and secular worlds, of theologians and lay scholars. As Brian Levack has
written:
The Great European Witch-Hunt could not have taken place until the
members of the ruling elites of European countries, especially those
men who controlled the operation of the judicial machinery, sub-
scribed to the various beliefs regarding the diabolical activities of
witches.9
The people of medieval and early modern Europe believed in sorcery or

magic and accused their neighbors of doing them harm if they believed those
neighbors had employed such powers to hurt them. Nevertheless, church-
men and other scholars convinced them not only that such practices were
pagan, but also that they were the result of a compact with the Devil.
Augustine, among the most influential of early Christian theologians, as
early as the fourth century argued that pagan religion and sorcery had been
invented by the Devil for the purpose of luring humanity from Christian
truth. He allowed that some of the supposed effects of sorcery were illu-
sions, but that others were real, and both were works of the Devil. Taking a
page from the Greco-Roman world, he insisted that to be effective, sorcerers
summoned pagan spirits or demons, all of whom served the Devil. Pagan
religion, then, as well as sorcerers, Augustine and subsequent Church fathers
insisted, must be eradicated; they served the Devil by frustrating Christ’s
plan for the salvation of the world.10
The Church not only opposed all non-Christian faiths it encountered in
Europe, but it also condemned all pagan beliefs and rituals retained by its
converts, a common phenomenon. In 743 the Synod of Rome outlawed
offerings to pagan deities, and in 744 the Council of Leptinnes drew up an
extensive “List of Superstitions,” which it prohibited. The council
approved a baptismal formula wherein the catechumen renounced all
“works of the demon, and all his words,” mentioning Thor, Odin, and
other northern European pagan deities. In 829, the Synod of Paris, based
on their reading of the Old Testament (Exodus 22:18 and Leviticus 20:6),
decreed that sorcerers should not be permitted to live, and that kings
should have the right to punish sorcerers severely, including executing
them where their incantations resulted in death.11
The most important and revealing of the early documents on witchcraft
was the Canon Episcopi. The Canon Episcopi, written by Regino of Prum of
France in about 900, condemned “wicked women … who believe that they
ride out at night on beasts with Diana, the pagan goddess.” Much as
Augustine had once reasoned, Regino explained that such visions were more
imagined than real, likely a remnant of pre-Christian folk beliefs, but that
they were nonetheless the doings of the Devil, thrust by him into the minds
of the faithless. It read:
Some wicked women are perverted by the Devil and led astray by illu-
sions and fantasies induced by demons. … Such fantasies are thrust into
the minds of faithless people, not by God, but by the Devil. … In this
form he captures and enslaves the mind of a miserable woman and
transforms himself into the shapes of various different people. He shows
her deluded mind strange things and unknown people and leads it on
weird journeys. It is only the mind that does this, but faithless people
believe that these things happen to the body as well.
The Canon Episcopi rejected the reality of people’s perception of witches –

arguing instead that they appeared to be real only to “deluded minds.” It
nevertheless presented the first written, detailed description of that perception,
which by the fifteenth century was assumed to be real.12
Two points in the Canon Episcopi will be of particular importance in our
discussion of the Salem witch trials. First, it assumed that the Devil could
possess only faithless people. Second, it insisted that witches could only
serve the Devil of their own free will, giving rise to the idea of a pact that
was the central tenet of European witchcraft. The belief that human beings
could sell their souls to the Devil became widespread in the ninth century,
when various legends regarding pacts were circulated. In some legends, the
person was saved from such a pact through the realization of his or her
error, confession, and divine intervention. But by the fifteenth century, that
element of the story was largely lost; a pact with the Devil sealed a person’s
fate once and for all.13
The first trials resembling those of witches yet to come occurred in central
and southern France and northern Italy in the eleventh, twelfth, and thir-
teenth centuries. Defendants, known as the Cathars, were charged with a
form of heresy known as Dualism; that is, they proclaimed the forces of
good and evil equal and eternal. They taught that the Spirit of Evil, the
Devil, had created the material world to entrap the spirit, which was God’s
creation. What is more important, however, is that the accused were
believed to have been enticed into their heretical beliefs by the Devil. They
were charged with having participated in nocturnal rituals presided over by
the Devil, wherein they engaged in orgies, renounced Christ, desecrated the
crucifix, and paid homage to the Devil. They called up evil spirits, it was
believed, and killed and cremated children conceived at previous orgies,
using their ashes to blaspheme the eucharist. The Church deemed them
heretics, silenced them through the Albigensian Crusade and a Court of
Inquisition, and burned many at the stake.14
Such trials became more frequent over the course of the next few
centuries, but once again two points need to be clarified. First, despite
the precedent-setting trials of the Cathars, the Great European Witch-
Hunt did not begin for another 250 years. It did not take place during the
Middle Ages, or the so-called Dark Ages, but during the early modern period
(c.1450–1750), which encompassed the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
It is true that the early modern period was characterized by both a more
mechanized view of the universe and a contempt for medieval learning, but
even leading thinkers did not deny the Devil’s existence. They rejected the
idea that magical occurrences were necessarily the work of the Devil, but
they continued to allow that some people could control the powers of the
universe. And, finally, several learned Renaissance humanists practiced
magic – albeit what they considered a more learned magic – thereby lending
it a greater measure of respectability. They may have been talking about a
learned magic, rather than witchcraft, but such fine points of distinction
were understandably lost on the less well-educated and comparatively more
superstitious masses.15
Second, the Inquisition, though important, did not play as large a role in
the Great European Witch-Hunt as is often assumed. The Inquisition was
established by the Church in a series of papal decrees during the 1230s to deal
with the crime of heresy. In persecuting witches, courts of inquisition not only
confirmed the connection between sorcery and heresy, but they also provided
the means, or mechanism, by which witches could be more efficiently prose-
cuted. In 1198, Pope Innocent III ordered the execution of those who persisted
in heresy after having been convicted and excommunicated. In 1231, Pope
Gregory IX appointed a number of Papal Inquisitors and mandated that
heretics, after condemnation, be delivered to secular authorities to be burned
at the stake, and, in 1252, Innocent IV authorized the use of torture by the
Inquisition. In 1275, at Toulouse, France, the first witch was burned, and in
time the Inquisition provided what might be termed the inquisitors’ manual
for the examination of witches. But by the fifteenth century, during the Great
European Witch-Hunt, most cases were tried in secular courts of law.16
The Great European Witch-Hunt

The Great European Witch-Hunt consisted of hundreds of separate hunts
involving anywhere from one to hundreds of individuals. The hunts occur-
red at different places and times, peaking in the years from 1580 to 1630.
Each hunt has its own history and should be studied separately for a more
complete understanding of the larger phenomenon. All that can be offered
here is a brief summary of what happened and a couple of case studies.
Many historians agree that the Great European Witch-Hunt began in France.
In 1428, secular judges at Valais tried over 100 individuals for worshipping the
Devil and employing sorcery to nefarious ends, from causing hailstones to ruin
crops to murdering people. From 1428 to 1447, 110 women and 57 men were
executed for witchcraft in Dauphiné.17
The most commonly agreed upon starting point, however, due to the
precedents it set, was in the French city of Arras, where, between 1459 and
1462, 34 people were accused of witchcraft and 12 were executed. All were
charged with devil worship, with only one prosecuted for doing harm, or
“maleficia.” All cases resulted from accusations lodged against one man who
was tortured into confessing and naming others. They in turn were tortured,
confessed, and implicated still others. The trials ended only when local
merchants, upset with the chaos the trials had created (which was no doubt
bad for business), appealed to the Duke of Burgundy.
The duke solicited the opinion of the theology faculty at the University of
Louvain, but the faculty could not agree on the reality of Sabbats, central to
the Arras trials. The duke sent an observer to the court, and his mere presence
was sufficient to cause a halt to the arrests. Four more of the previously
accused were tried and convicted, but only one was executed before the Par-
lement of Paris, on the appeal of one of the convicted, put an end to the trials
and ordered most of those jailed released. The Bishop of Arras, who had been
in Rome but returned to his diocese at that point, freed the rest. In 1491, the
Parlement investigated the Arras trials, declared all of the accused innocent,
pardoned the convicted, and ordered the erection of a large cross at the place
of execution, paid for by fines placed on local prosecutors.18
The surge in witch trials precipitated the appearance of a group of
witch-hunters, the best known of which was the German Dominican
Heinrich Kramer, or Institoris (his Latin name). In 1474, the Vatican
appointed him inquisitor in southern Germany, and he presided over
nearly fifty executions for witchcraft in the diocese of Constance, alone,
between 1481 and 1486. When faced with resistance from local ecclesias-
tical and secular authorities, he persuaded Pope Innocent VIII to issue the
bull Summis Desiderantes Affectibus (Wishing with Greatest Concern,
1484) in which the pope offered his full support for Kramer’s work and
called on German officials to cooperate with him in the hunt.19
In 1486, Kramer and fellow Dominican Jacob Sprenger, inquisitor for
the Rhineland, used Innocent VIII’s bull as the preface to their Malleus
Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), the major treatise in the West on
witchcraft.20 Essentially, “a case-book manual for inquisitors,” the Malleus
was essentially a synthesis of arguments for, and examples of, European
witchcraft as it had developed thus far. It was reprinted in twenty-nine separate
editions in Italy, France, and Germany between 1489 and 1669, and it was read
by Protestants and Catholics alike.
The Malleus made a case for the reality of witchcraft by defining and
explaining its nature. It outlined its effects, showed it to be a corporate
rather than a solitary activity, and identified its practitioners as being mostly
female. It described what witches did, and it set out the procedures to be
used against them, whether in an ecclesiastical or a secular court. Through
its influence and that of other similar manuals, the list of questions asked of
suspected witches throughout Europe became uniform: Who seduced you
into signing a pact with the Devil? Why did you give in? What did the Devil
promise you? When did you make a pact with the Devil? What was the
Devil like? What was it like to have sexual relations with him?21
Kramer and Sprenger provided the four essential characterizations by
which those charged with witchcraft could be identified: renunciation of
Christianity, devotion to the Devil, offering unbaptized children to the
Devil, and engaging in orgies that included intercourse with the Devil. They
described witches as typically shifting their shapes, flying through the air,
and abusing Christian sacraments. But just as important, Kramer and
Sprenger pictured a secret society of Devil-worshiping witches, directed by
the Devil in a cosmic plot against Christian society. The Devil could operate
without human assistance, they asserted, but he preferred not to, as it
proved to be more effective. Therefore, the authors concluded, all witches
were to be found and executed.22
Documents such as the Malleus and the work of witch-hunters such as
Kramer and Sprenger met with some resistance from those who were skeptical
of elements of witch-beliefs, in many cases building on questions raised in
the previously mentioned Canon Episcopi (c.900). Such critics, who were
ultimately ineffective early on, were drawn from the ranks of Renaissance
humanists, as well as theologians, especially Protestant, who insisted that only
God was the source of apparent magic in the world, not witches working with
demons. One of the earliest critics was the Dutch physician Johann Weyer. In
his De Praestigiis Daemonum (On the Delusion of Demons, 1563), Weyer
argued that ignorant women who confessed to witchcraft were suffering from
delusions and melancholy, and that alleged maleficia could be explained by
natural causes. Weyer did not deny the reality of demonic power in the world,
however, nor that people imagining that they made pacts with the Devil were
nonetheless guilty of heresy, thereby limiting the effectiveness of his criticism.23
As important as papal inquisitors such as Kramer and Sprenger were,
most of the trials that occurred in the Great European Witch-Hunt took
place in secular courts. By the fifteenth century, witchcraft had become a
civil, even a capital, crime. The result was a more effective and efficient
witch-hunt than would have transpired if left to the Church. Witchcraft
continued to be a crime punishable by death (burning at the stake on the
Continent, hanging in England and New England), and on the Continent,
civil courts continued to use torture to obtain confessions, but procedural
matters were more clearly defined and regulated by law.24
The courts designed tests by which guilt or innocence could be established.
They commonly employed the ordeal, whereby the accused would hold a hot
iron for a period of time. Her hand – as most of the accused were women – was
then properly bandaged and if the skin healed within a few days, it was seen as
Figure 1.1 Three witches burned alive from a German Broadside, c.1555. In Europe,
convicted witches were often burned alive. This woodcut shows the
execution of three people, with a demon withdrawing backwards from
the mouth of one of the victims.
© Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo
God’s sign that she was innocent. They also used the “swimming test,” wherein
the accused, after being bound hand and foot, was thrown into the water. If she
sank, God’s creature water had accepted her, and she was deemed innocent and
hauled ashore. If she floated, it had rejected her, and she was condemned. Strip
searches were ordered in search of the Devil’s mark, a sign of the pact, and of
“witches’ teats,” used to nurture familiars.25
Also important for the better prosecution of witches, a new court system
evolved in Europe quite independent of the witch trials. An inquisitorial
system of criminal procedure replaced the older accusatorial system. Under
the accusatorial system, private parties both initiated charges against and
prosecuted individuals. The judge’s job was to weigh the evidence and pass
judgment. If those who brought charges failed to make their case, however,
they could be subject to criminal prosecution. Under the inquisitorial
system, which was in place throughout most of Europe by the sixteenth
century (England being the notable exception), charges could be brought by
civil officials. Upon receipt of complaints, or even without formal charges
having been brought, they could order investigations and arrests, and
plaintiffs were immune to the threat of countersuit.26
The inquisitorial system facilitated the prosecution of witches from the
top down and enhanced the power of judges, who assumed nearly complete
control of the witch-hunting process. They could decide which cases to
prosecute and which to ignore. They controlled the use of torture, deter-
mined guilt or innocence, and passed sentences. That is not to say that
protective measures for defendants did not exist. The testimony of two
eyewitnesses, for example, was usually required for conviction, but those who
could give eyewitness accounts of diabolism were often suspected of being the
witch’s accomplice. Therefore, they were not likely to testify, unless they had
been charged as well.
Under the law, at least, the use of torture was regulated. Generally, judges
could not order torture unless there was sufficient evidence to merit a pre-
sumption of guilt, in which case its purpose was to ascertain the facts of the
crime and the names of other conspirators. The severity of torture was to be
limited only to what was necessary to achieve its desired ends, from sleep
deprivation to thumb screws to use of the rack, and it was not to cause
death. To guard against forced confessions, testimony taken in the torture
chamber was not admissible. Defendants had to confess “freely” outside of
the chamber and within twenty-four hours, and those who recanted their
confessions were not to be repeatedly tortured.27
The results of torture, however, were predictable. In one study of witch
trials in Lorraine, 90 percent of the accused confessed. In Baden-Baden and
Ellwangen, the percentage was even higher, leading in the latter case to the
implication of as many as twenty-nine others.28 Some confessed without
torture or inordinate pressure, convinced they were in fact witches and in
need of saving their souls through confession. There were those who con-
fessed and/or implicated others to escape the stake, but that tactic was
seldom successful. There were only a few cases, largely in the Inquisition in
southern Europe, where confession was seen as a reconciliation with God,
thereby meriting a pardon.
Protective measures were of limited value when emotions ran high, which
was often the case. At the height of the Great European Witch-Hunt, reg-
ulations concerning torture and other matters were often ignored. Witch-
craft was regarded as an exceptional crime, posing a threat to church and
state, and many judges felt little compunction in ignoring the law. This was
especially true in local courts, wherein the majority of cases were heard,
which operated with a large measure of independence from what central
authority existed at the time, and where emotions tended to run higher.29
Belief in the diabolical conspiracies of witches was a prerequisite for the
Great European Witch-Hunt, but, as considered in the case of Arras, social
forces provided the impetus. As numerous as they were, only certain areas
of Europe experienced witch-hunts, and those areas were commonly char-
acterized by the high anxiety that accompanied political, social, economic,
and religious problems. In fact, although it is difficult to measure, historians
have argued that witch-hunts were the product of the intense anxiety such
problems commonly evoked, including plagues, famines, and wars. In parti-
cular, they have pointed to the repercussions of religious strife in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, as well as to dislocations that accompanied Europe’s
passage into the early modern period.30
In brief, although the Protestant Reformation rejected much Church
doctrine, Protestants did not distance themselves immediately from the
Roman Church’s teachings on witchcraft. In time, the Protestant emphasis
on God’s sovereignty made its adherents more skeptical of aspects of
witchcraft, but at least at the start they were equally zealous. As Richard
Weisman has written about the early years of Protestantism, “the more
Protestants elevated divine will beyond the range of human manipulation,
the more desperate and urgent their struggle against any resurgence of
interest in magical practices became.” The more they enhanced the powers of
the Devil, the more they left the people defenseless. Not surprisingly, then,
historians have found the same pragmatic attitudes toward the use of charms
and incantations after the Reformation as before. And, although irreversibly
divided and hostile to one another in most other ways, Protestant and
Catholic leaders collaborated, albeit unofficially, in hunting witches.31
Catholics and Protestants alike interpreted the Reformation – a great civil
war for Christians – as another example of the Devil’s presence in the
world, and they responded with even greater emphasis on eradicating
remaining superstitious beliefs and pagan practices. Luther called for the
burning of witches as heretics who had made pacts with the Devil, whether
or not they had actually harmed anyone, and although Calvin seemed to
have been less concerned with witches than his followers, Calvinists were as
zealous as any in hunting witches. The most extensive witchcraft prosecu-
tions in Catholic France and Catholic and Protestant German-speaking
regions occurred between 1550 and 1650, after the Reformation, but still in
the wake of the turmoil it created. Moreover, witch-hunting was most
intense in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Scotland, and along the borders of
France, all of which were religiously heterogeneous. Religiously homo-
geneous and more secure states, like Spain and Italy, experienced lower
levels of activity.32
Historians have suggested that some of the economic, social, and
demographic developments that accompanied Europe’s move into the early
modern period added to the tensions that provoked witchcraft accusations.
The transition from a dominantly rural agrarian to an increasingly urban
commercial, capitalist economy bred inflation, increased poverty by pro-
viding for a rapidly growing population that taxed a less rapidly expanding
supply of resources, and instigated changes in the structure of the family,
including a larger number of unattached females due to the religious
wars.33
When combined with the religious and political struggles of the period,
such social and economic changes created a mood of anxiety in all segments
of society that made people more sensitive to the supposed dangers of
witchcraft. As historian Brian Levack has written, the early modern period
was one of the “most psychically disturbed periods in human history,” and
that anxiety created a mood both among the elite and the common people
that greatly encouraged witch-hunts. Among the elite, it encouraged a ten-
dency to attribute the turmoil, instability, and confusion they saw in the
world to the Devil and to the activities of his witches. Among the common
people, attacks on witches helped relieve their pain and anxiety. In sum,
witches became scapegoats for the entire community.34
The reader may well object that many historical periods experienced
substantial change and consequent anxiety, but that they did not all resort
to witch-hunts. Historians have offered no definitive response to this objec-
tion, except to say that change in the early modern period was truly excep-
tional, unleashing a number of highly destructive civil rebellions and
international conflicts, and that perhaps those communities that did resort
to witch-hunts were less capable of coping with that change. Why some
communities were less able to cope requires an investigation of local condi-
tions beyond the scope of this brief account, but it will be undertaken in the
case of Salem village.35
In the meantime, it should be noted that witch-hunts in the early modern
period tended to follow three patterns. Although less dramatic and well-
known, the most common involved the prosecution of fewer than three
people. Medium-sized hunts, involving five to ten witches, occurred less
frequently. These small panics were most common in French-speaking
Switzerland, but they could be found in Germany and Scotland as well.
Torture was a major factor in such cases, resulting in the naming of names,
but in the case of medium hunts the list of the accused did not go beyond
the names of those previously suspected of such activity.36
Finally, there were the infamous, though far less common, full-blown hunts
that occurred mostly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They claimed
anywhere from dozens to hundreds of victims and were characterized by panic
or hysteria. They were most common in Germany and along its borders, but
nearly every country experienced at least one, and regardless of where they
occurred, they tended to follow what has become known as the “classic”
pattern. They were chain reactions, wherein successive victims, perhaps in a
desperate attempt to escape execution, named others, including many never
before suspected of any such activity. In Trier, for example, during the
1580s and 1590s, 306 accused witches named about 1,500 others, while at
Rouen, in 1669–1670, nine individuals alone initiated 525 indictments.37
The absence of complete records makes it difficult to establish the exact
number of cases or executions during the Great European Witch-Hunt.
Historians have verified thousands of cases for the 250-year period beginning
in the mid-fifteenth century, but estimates of actual total prosecutions vary
greatly, venturing even into the millions. Referring to estimates as high as
nine million, Brian Levack has commented: “These estimates have been
inflated both by claims of witch-hunters themselves, who often boasted
about how many witches they had burned, and by subsequent writers, who
for different reasons wished to emphasize the gravity of the process they
were discussing.” Based on more current documentation and reasoned
extrapolations, Levack has concluded that the total number of Europeans
who were prosecuted for witchcraft probably did not exceed 90,000, with
approximately 45,000 executions.38
Prosecution and execution rates varied from place to place. Some areas of
Europe experienced no witchcraft prosecutions. On the other hand, as many
as 70 to 75 percent of prosecutions occurred in Germany, France, Switzerland,
and the Low Countries, an area encompassing roughly 50 percent of the entire
population of Europe. During the early years of the Great European Witch-
Hunt, most prosecutions took place in France, especially along its border with
Germany, but by the late sixteenth century, Germany took the lead. In the
end, perhaps half of all of those prosecuted in the Great European Witch-
Hunt lived in German-speaking lands, with the next heaviest concentrations
occurring nearby in Poland, Switzerland, and the borderlands of France.
Similarly, execution rates were highest in those areas, reaching 90 percent of
those tried in parts of France, Germany, Switzerland, and Poland at the peak
of their witch-hunting activity.39
Witch-hunting in Spain and Italy lagged much further behind. In Spain,
from 1580 to 1650, about 3,500 witches were tried. In Italy, the numbers
were higher, but, excluding the Italian-speaking Alpine regions along the
Swiss border, it is difficult to find evidence for more than 500 executions, a
percentage far lower than other regions.40
It is difficult to explain the comparative reluctance in Italy and Spain to
execute witches during the Great European Witch-Hunt, but some points
are clear and important to note. First, the cumulative concept of witchcraft
described earlier as common in northern Europe did not take hold in the
south. The Malleus Maleficarum, for example, was not well-received in
Italy, because of the strength of Humanism within intellectual circles.
Second in all their severity and cruelty, the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions
were rigorous in following trial procedures. Unlike most civil courts of the
time, the Church made provision for legal counsel; it furnished defendants
with copies of charges and evidence used against them; and it placed little
value on the testimony of condemned witches, or the naming of names,
which was so devastating elsewhere. And, as noted earlier, the use of torture
was carefully regulated, generally being ordered only where the evidence was
considerable, if still circumstantial.41
Third, the flames of witch-hunting in Spain may have been contained by the
comparatively strong central control of its judiciary. As noted above, virile
witch-hunts tended to occur in local courts, those subject to more personal and
even intimate knowledge and prejudices against the accused, and beyond cen-
tral control. And, fourth, the Spanish may have been less ardent in their
execution of witches because of their much stronger concern with Jews
and Muslims. In Spain, much more so than in other countries in Europe,
witch-hunting had as much to do with the demonizing of outsiders and
intruders – Muslims who occupied Spanish territory, Jews, and conversos
(those who had converted to Christianity).42
Although the previously cited figures on prosecution and execution rates are
lower than those noted in some other accounts, they nevertheless point to the
grim reality of the Great European Witch-Hunt. This is especially true if
the following points are considered. First, the figures do not take into account
the number of individuals, likely quite large, who were never officially charged
but who nevertheless lived under a cloud of suspicion. Second, prosecutions
and executions were not evenly distributed, but rather concentrated in certain
areas, thereby magnifying their destructiveness on the social fabric of those
locales. We can only imagine what resulted in Bamberg, Germany, for exam-
ple, when between 1625 and 1630, 425 accused witches were burned; in the city
of Osnabruck, Germany, where during the summer of 1583, 121 were executed;
and in the Prince-Bishopric of Wurzburg, Germany, in 1617, where 300 were
executed.43
Further, certain types of people were disproportionately represented
among the accused. Various reasons have been offered for this, but most
historians agree that some were more likely to be charged than others
because their being singled out allowed members of early modern European
communities to resolve conflicts between themselves and their neighbors and
to explain misfortunes that befell them in their daily lives. In brief, witches
were scapegoats. When witch-hunts were initiated from above (i.e., by
inquisitors or magistrates), when torture was used, when charges of diabo-
lism took precedence over charges of maleficia, the principal pattern was
upper-class officials condemning lower-class witches. When charges were
brought from below (i.e., neighbor versus neighbor), where protection from
maleficia was paramount, witch-hunts commonly pitted members of the
lower classes against each other, members of the elite serving as arbiters, or
at times supporters of the accusers.
The reasons for the disproportionate number of accusations against the
poor are easily explained. They were the weakest and most vulnerable
members of society, and therefore they were easy targets. Further, the poor
were dependent on those better off than they (as opposed to government
programs) for their well-being, and that aroused feelings of resentment and
even guilt. The number of poor increased in the early modern period, and
the economic situation of others became precarious. Therefore, historians
have argued, accusations may well have been used by those only marginally
better off to break off long-standing, but now intolerable, relations with
their poorer neighbors.44
More difficult to explain is why over 75 percent of those accused of
being witches were female. Some have argued that witchcraft is uni-
versally specific to women, which is not accurate, while others have
shown that such gender identification has been more pronounced in
patriarchal societies like those in the West. Given the history of Western
Christendom’s attitudes toward them, it is clear that early modern Eur-
opean women were suspect, at least in part, because they were believed to
be morally weaker than men and, therefore, more likely to succumb to
diabolical temptation.45 Kramer and Sprenger, in the Malleus Maleficarum,
described those women who had not renounced their bodies in the image of
the Virgin Mary as particularly susceptible because they were not only
intellectually inferior and superstitious, but also subject to a greater
extent than men to an insatiable carnal lust – insatiable, that is, unless
quenched by the Devil:
All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable. …

Wherefore for the sake of fulfilling their lusts they consort with
devils. … [So] it is sufficiently clear that it is no matter for wonder that
there are more women than men found infested with the heresy of
witchcraft. …46
At the height of the Great European Witch-Hunt, especially on the Con-

tinent, witches were said to be not only Devil worshippers, but the Devil’s
sexual slaves, leading some historians to conclude that the witch trials were
symptomatic of a dramatic rise in fear of women’s sexuality. But there were
also less theoretical reasons for the charging of women. Those women who
served as healers and midwives, for example, appear to have been particu-
larly vulnerable. They employed a variety of folk remedies often deemed
magical, and such remedies were welcome when employed successfully.
When things went wrong, however, as in the case of about 20 percent of all
births, they could easily be charged with employing “black magic” or using
the same arts for evil purposes.47
Finally, it has been argued that women, especially poor women, may have
been disproportionately charged with witchcraft because, in the minds of
their accusers, their physical, economic, and political weaknesses made them
more likely to seek diabolical power as an instrument of protection or
revenge. That is to say, ironically, that the most vulnerable people of the
Great European Witch-Hunt may have become victims because they were
feared by their neighbors as potentially powerful and threatening.48
This having been said, Brian Levack, William Monter, and Robin Briggs
have identified several exceptions to the aggregated data that point to the
preponderance of women among the accused. In particular, they have refer-
enced peak periods in Finland, where approximately 50 percent of the accused
were men; to Estonia at 60 percent; to Rouen and Russia at 75 percent; and to
Iceland at 90 percent. These may well be outliers, but as Brian Levack has
reminded us, there was nothing in the legal definition of a witch that excluded
males – that they could practice the same harmful magic as women – and
although their numbers were smaller, they were not absent.49 Levack identi-
fied four circumstances in which men were as likely as women to be accused.
The first circumstance was when prosecutions were linked to other forms
of heresy. Levack provides data on the Inquisition in areas of Italy and
Spain, where prosecutions were mainly concerned with heresy, not maleficia.
He also provides data on trials in the Kingdom of Aragon, where almost all
of the witches prosecuted in the secular courts were female, but where 72
percent of the accused tried by the Inquisition during the first half of the
seventeenth century were male.50
The second circumstance involved cases involving “political sorcery,” or
where men were suspected of using ritual magic to advance their political
careers. By way of an example, Levack points to the witch-hunt in Scotland,
which took place in 1590 and 1591, and that involved accusations of treason
against the king by a ring of men led by the Earl of Bothwell.51
The third circumstance involved cases where the use of ritual magic was
traditionally associated with males. In Normandy, which produced the
highest percentage of male witches in western Europe, for example, the
archetypical witch was a shepherd, who might be an old man or a teenager
charged with sickening livestock. The most feared witches’ spells were likely
to involve toad venom, and the most powerful witches’ magic was per-
formed with stolen eucharists. Two other overrepresented groups included
clergy and blacksmiths, who practiced illicit forms of veterinary medicine.52
And finally, on Levack’s list were large-scale outbreaks involving the
naming of names that got out of control, which led to the breakdown of
stereotyping and to the greater inclusion of men. Levack references the work
of Stephen Boyer and Paul Nissenbaum on Salem in 1692 as an appropriate
example for this study.53
To this list should be added the argument that witch-hunting was a disguised
form of women-hating. Although more difficult to prove, it can certainly be
seen in the misogynistic commentaries of the Malleus Maleficarum and other
documents from the period, which historians have pointed to as “prime
evidence for man’s inhumanity to women.”54
Other factors characteristic of accused witches involved age and marital
status. The majority of the accused in the Great European Witch-Hunt were
over fifty years old, and, more often than should have been the case, given their
numbers in the general population, they were widowed or never married. In
Geneva, 75 percent of the accused were over fifty, for example, while 56 percent
were not married at the time they were charged.55 The factor of age might
simply reflect the tendency of the accused to accumulate suspicion over time, as
well as criminal records and histories of antisocial behavior, but that they were
also disproportionately single begs further explanation.
In the early modern period, because of the plague and warfare, both of
which killed more men than women, the percentage of widows among all
women increased from 10 percent to as high as 30 percent in some areas.
The percentage of never-married women increased from about 5 percent to
nearly 20 percent, as the age of first marriages increased and the population
of convents declined. Widows and never-married women were vulnerable
because, unless they were committed to chastity, having been denied the
usual outlets, they were seen as more likely to seek sexual satisfaction
through extraordinary means – with the Devil, for example. Moreover, their
growing numbers were seen as a threat to the male-dominated society, in
general, and to the institution of marriage, in particular. Widows, for
example, as will be shown in our discussion of developments in Salem, were
accused by their sons if they stood in the way of land inheritance from their
deceased fathers, especially if the widow remarried.56
Finally contributing to the profile of most suspects was the witch’s person-
ality. As personalities, they exhibited considerable diversity, but there were
certain characteristics common to the accused. They were often pictured as
sharp-tongued, bad-tempered, and quarrelsome, often engaged in numer-
ous disputes with neighbors and incurring ever-increasing resentment
toward them within the community. They were known for their scolding
and cursing, which was easily confused with casting spells. And they
often had court records for violations such as non-attendance at church,
Sabbath-breaking, cursing, fornication, prostitution, abortion, adultery,
and homosexuality. At the least, the accused were commonly guilty of
what was seen as inappropriate behavior for their sex. They did not
adhere to traditional behavioral standards. They defied contemporary
standards of docility and domesticity and inverted the ideal of the good
Christian wife and mother.57
A Summary View of Witch-Hunts in England

Not surprisingly, given the close relationship between England and her
colonies, England provides a better model than the rest of Europe for witch-
hunts in British North America, including Salem.
To begin with, as a general rule, both the frequency and intensity of witch-
hunts diminished over time and distance from central Europe, which was the
case in England. England had lower rates of prosecution and execution of wit-
ches than did most other countries in Europe, including Scotland. During the
Great European Witch-Hunt, England indicted approximately 2,000 indivi-
duals, executing about 500, or about 25 percent, and even its major witch-hunt
of the 1640s paled in comparison to those of various locales on the Continent.
Historians have credited the lower rates to various factors. Brian Levack, for
example, has pointed to the delayed and incomplete reception of the cumulative
concept of witchcraft, namely the focus on religious heresies, which had per-
sisted for centuries on the Continent. He and others have pointed to the more
centralized English judicial system, established during the late-Middle Ages,
based on common law, which did not follow the Continent’s lead into the
inquisitorial system. Neighbors, rather than judges, initiated cases in most
cases. The courts were not allowed to use torture to secure confessions, thereby
resulting in fewer confessions, and verdicts were rendered by juries, who were
comparatively more lenient in their verdicts. Further, given the nature of
the alleged crimes, eye-witness accounts were more difficult to come by. But the
lower numbers and intensity have also been attributed to different concerns
over the dangers of witchcraft. Whereas authorities on the Continent were
most concerned with heresy, those who brought charges in England feared
maleficia, or the use of diabolical powers to cause harm.58
In England, most cases of witchcraft were brought by neighbor against
neighbor. In a few cases, local officials could act on their own in identifying
suspects, but in either case, local elites, or officials, conducted pre-trial
examinations of the accused and witnesses, and where sufficient evidence
was found they forwarded their findings to higher level governing bodies for
trials. Although the emphasis would change during the mid-seventeenth
century outbreak, English judges were less concerned with ferreting out an
organized witch society or cult of Satan than they were with dealing with
the harm caused to others. Suggestively, the Malleus Maleficarum, which
was so influential on the Continent and emphasized the diabolical rather
than the malefic aspect of witchcraft, did not appear in an English
translation until 1584, the same year Reginald Scot criticized that work
in Discoverie of Witchcraft. 59
Nevertheless, England participated in the Great European Witch-Hunt,
and there were similarities between what happened in England and on the
Continent. Witches were just as likely to be women. Alan Macfarlane has
estimated that in the county of Essex, for example, 85 percent of the accused
were women and a disproportionate number of them were widows; 87 per-
cent of the accused were between fifty and seventy years old, and those of
low social status were over-represented. As on the Continent, women who
engaged in midwifery and other healing arts were likely targets, but only if
they had been suspect for years before they were actually charged with
witchcraft.60
On the other hand, the English were more likely than Continental Europeans
to make reference to witches’ familiars (perhaps as the result of the British
fondness in folklore for the “little people”), and those familiars had intercourse
with witches and sucked at witches’ teats. But there was significantly less
emphasis on sex, especially between witches and the Devil. Moreover, because
greater emphasis was placed on the power of witches to engage in maleficia
than on their worshipping the Devil, it was almost entirely a civil matter, and
not a religious one; and, in most cases, those convicted were jailed or banished,
and even in the extreme, hanged not burned.61
Finally, Macfarlane found that almost all bewitching occurred within
villages, or even neighborhoods. He did not find any meaningful correlation
between the frequency of accusations and religious grouping. Neither could he
establish any relationship between witchcraft accusations and previous
criminal records (e.g., theft, murder, breaking the Sabbath, quarreling,
scolding, or sexual offenses), but he did find that witches were often thought
of as quarrelsome and unpleasant. Thus, in England, more so than on the
Continent, witch trials were often an outgrowth of community conflict.
They arose out of quarreling between neighbors, often over loans and gifts,
and followed oral outbursts and subsequent unexpected misfortune suffered
by one of the parties.62
As on the Continent, there was a long history of sorcery and evil sorcerers
in England, but they were dealt with locally. As early as 747, the Council of
Clovesho directed bishops to speak out against sorcerers, and several secu-
lar, or civil, laws were passed threatening those who participated in such
activities with imprisonment, banishment, and even execution. Nevertheless,
sorcery, at least insofar as it involved fortune-telling, the casting of spells,
and the use of charms to heal or ward off disease, continued to be very
popular – that is, until the English Reformation.63
The first statute specifically concerned with witchcraft was enacted in 1542,
in the wake of the English Reformation but still during the reign of Henry VIII.
Its passage indicates a more aggressive policy toward witchcraft under the
Church of England, while its wording reflects the greater emphasis the English
placed on maleficia, rather than heresy. The statute made witchcraft a felony
“without benefit of clergy,” punishable by death. It defined witchcraft as “using
invocation, conjuration, or sorcery to find money or to waste, consume, or
destroy any person in his body, members, or goods,” or “to provoke anyone to
unlawful love or for any other unlawful intent or purpose.”64
Few cases resulted from the statute of 1542, and it was revoked under
Edward VI five years later. In 1563, however, Parliament acted again, this time
passing a more complex piece of legislation. The Elizabethan statute retained
the death penalty for invoking evil spirits for any purpose and for committing
murder by witchcraft, but it reduced the penalty for those found guilty of using
“witchcraft, enchantment, charm, or sorcery” to cause bodily harm short of
death or to steal or destroy property. Such lesser offenses were punishable by as
little as one year’s imprisonment, in the case of first offenses.65
The first major trial for witchcraft in England occurred in 1566 at
Chelmsford in Essex. Charged were Elizabeth Francis, Agnes Waterhouse,
and Agnes’s daughter Joan. Elizabeth was charged with bewitching a child
and committing other evil deeds. In her confession, she explained that she had
learned witchcraft from her grandmother when she was twelve years old. Her
grandmother had led Elizabeth to renounce God, and she had given her a cat
named Sathan, who was the Devil in animal form. The cat, whom Elizabeth
was to suckle with her own blood and with whom Elizabeth could speak,
promised her riches and a husband, and indeed Sathan brought her livestock
and one Andrew Byles. Byles, however, after enjoying her favors, refused
Elizabeth’s hand in marriage, whereupon Sathan caused his death and taught
Elizabeth how to abort his child. Elizabeth later married and had a daughter,
but the infant so annoyed her that she had Sathan murder it as well.66
After having him some sixteen years in her possession, Elizabeth gave
Sathan to her daughter Agnes. Agnes, wanting the wool that lined the cat’s
box, changed Sathan into a toad, and together they carried out many evil
deeds (e.g., drowning cows, killing geese, spoiling butter) until both Eliza-
beth and Agnes were arrested. Agnes was hanged in 1566. Elizabeth, perhaps
because of her helpful testimony, was spared the death penalty, but she was
hanged for a second conviction thirteen years later. Her granddaughter
Joan, who was also charged, was found not guilty.67
In 1579, once again in Essex, several more women were tried for witchcraft,
and in 1582 another particularly notorious one, wherein thirteen witches were
convicted in St. Osyth’s, near Colchester. The latter case made such a “great
noise,” George Lyman Kittredge has written, that it incurred a response by
Reginald Scot. Scot’s response, however, which appeared in 1584, titled Dis-
coverie of Witchcraft, was, as well, a critique of the Malleus Maleficarum,
which, as previously noted, had only recently been published in England. In
brief, while allowing that evil spirits existed, Scot insisted, once again, that
the evil acts with which witches had been charged were illusions, to which he
added that the accusations brought against begging old women had social
explanations.68 Scot’s reasoning did not prevail, however, and the number of
witchcraft trials steadily increased during the 1580s and 1590s, before a
momentary lull in activity greeted the new century.
Particularly critical of Reginald Scot was King James VI of Scotland, with
whom, along with publication of the Malleus Maleficarum, continental
ideas on witchcraft arrived in England. Scotland was a hotbed of witch-
hunting, and although James did not initiate it or even become instrumental
to it, he was a believer and an active participant. He had been converted to
the cause during the North Berwick witch trials of 1590–1592, which
involved a young girl named Gilly Duncan. Duncan, who had the reputation
of being able to cure the sick, was charged with practicing witchcraft,
whereupon she confessed and named several other women and men in and
around Edinburgh. James examined one of the accused, Agnes Sampson,
himself. When she refused to confess, Sampson was stripped, shaved, and
searched for the Devil’s mark. Upon its being found, she was tortured until
she confessed (not allowed in England), named still others, and told of a
group of men and women who had sailed in sieves to North Berwick on
Halloween, entered a church illuminated by black candles, paid homage to
the Devil in the form of a man, and plotted to raise a storm to sink the
King’s ship when he sailed to Denmark.69
By 1597, James was convinced that the hunting of witches had gone too far,
that fraud had been involved in many cases, and that innocent people had
been condemned, and he used his influence to end it. He nevertheless pub-
lished his Daemonologie, a direct attack on the moderate voices of critics such
as Reginald Scot. James insisted that witches did exist, explaining that
although man had been made in God’s image, he had lost that image through
original sin. God had restored that image to the elect, James continued, but
the rest of mankind was relegated to the Devil, whereupon they bore his
image. They became his followers, and some chose to become witches in
order to do harm to those whom God had elected and the Devil opposed.
They needed to be searched out, James concluded, and eradicated for the
good of mankind.70
Daemonologie was reissued in England upon James’s ascension to the
throne – as James I of England – in 1603, and in 1604 he encouraged Parliament
to adopt a statute that made penalties more severe. Death was prescribed for
those guilty of an even greater list of witchcraft-related crimes, including those
who would “consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed, or reward any evil
or wicked spirit to or for any intent or purpose, whether it be a first or sub-
sequent offense.”71 Further, James commissioned an English translation of the
Bible (the “Authorized” or “King James Version”) in which a certain ambig-
uous Hebrew word in Exodus 22:18 was translated and thereby rendered more
explicitly “witch” – as in “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
In fairness, it should be noted that James’s actions did not signal a full-
blown witch-hunt in England; that occurred some four decades later during
the English Civil War. It was centered in Essex, and leading the charge was
Matthew Hopkins, the most notorious English witch-hunter. In two years
under his charge, more Englishmen were hanged for witchcraft than in the
previous century.72
Unlike continental inquisitors such as Jacob Sprenger, who were men of
the cloth, Hopkins was a lawyer. The Witch-Finder General, as he was
known, was a Puritan, and he operated during a period in which Puritans
came to dominate Parliament. Nevertheless, English witch-hunting was not
exclusively, or even mostly, a Puritan affair. First, the mid-seventeenth-cen-
tury Essex hunt was the only one in which Puritans dominated. Second, even
in that hunt, Hopkins was both opposed by his fellow Puritans and sup-
ported by non-Puritans, some of whom led the charge after Hopkins’s reign
ended. And, third, once again in reference to the Essex affair, once the Pur-
itan leader Oliver Cromwell secured power, the witch trials languished. In
sum, the Hopkins’s outbreak, like others, is best seen as the result of the
disturbed condition of the country during the English Civil War, rather than
as the product of Puritan theology.73
Operating through a Special Commission of Oyer and Terminer, granted in
1645, Hopkins’s methods were unusually cruel by English standards.
Although the evidence that he used torture is inconclusive, he did at least
deprive the accused of food and sleep, and thereby elicited a sufficient number
of confessions to lend credibility to his actions. In contrast to other English
witch-hunts, Hopkins placed greater emphasis on pacts with the Devil and
possession. His victims confessed to behavior more commonly admitted to by
those on the Continent, including sexual intercourse with the Devil and
attendance at the Sabbat, and they were more likely to name others. Hopkins,
however, moved too quickly, and by 1646 the flames he had ignited consumed
him. He was forced to retire, and the following year he died in disgrace.74
The number of witch trials in England declined rapidly after Hopkins’s
resignation. Belief in witches continued, and learned treatises on the
subject were published. In 1666, for example, John Glanville published
Some Philosophical Considerations Touching Witches and Witchcraft, in
which he defended belief in witches on the basis of Christian theology
and argued that disbelief proceeded from atheism. To reject the Devil, he
explained, was to deny the entire spirit world, including God. Further,
some notable cases no doubt influential in New England occurred in the
remaining decades of the seventeenth century. In Bury St. Edmunds, for
example, a group of women was convicted of witchcraft in large part on
the testimony of children. In 1664 in Somerset, several women were
charged with attending covens led by a man in black clothing, and in
Exeter in 1682 a group of “very old, decrepit, and impotent” women, as
one eyewitness described them, was condemned.75 By the end of the seven-
teenth century, however, the scene of English witch-hunts had shifted to
New England.
Notes
1 George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1929), 329.
2 Carlo Ginsburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Six-
teenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 438.
3 Jeffrey B. Russell, A History of Witchcraft: Sorcerers, Heretics, and Pagans
(London: Thames & Hudson, 1980), 29; Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early
Modern Europe, fourth edition (London and New York: Longman, 2016), 4–5.
4 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 31–33; Ginsburg, The Night Battles, 42–50;
Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 210–219.
5 Elaine Pagels, “The Social History of Satan, The ‘Intimate Enemy’: A Preliminary
Sketch,” Harvard Theological Review, 84 (April 1991): 105; Levack, The Witch-
Hunt, 29. See also: Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Vintage,
1996); and Henry Ansgar Kelly, Satan: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge
6 Pagels, “The Social History of Satan,” 111, 115.
7 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 35; Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of
the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 22–23; Elaine
Pagels, “The Social History of Satan, Part II: Satan in the New Testament Gospels,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 62 (Spring 1994): 17–58; Levack, The
Witch-Hunt, 30. See also: Pagels, “The Social History of Satan,” 114.
8 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 20–21.
9 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 28.
10 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 39–40. See, for example, Augustine’s Confessions,
Book xxi, Chapter 6: www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/hum100/augustinconf.pdf
11 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 52–53.
12 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 53–54; Klaits, Servants of Satan, 39.
13 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 114; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle
Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 84–95; Russell, A History of
Witchcraft, 55; E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The
Borderlands of the Reformation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976),
159–166.
14 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 60.
15 William Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1972), 108–159; Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 176; Levack,
The Witch-Hunt, 56–59; C. G. Nauert, Agrippa and The Crisis of Renaissance
Thought (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 200, 240–24, 292–301; E.
William Monter, ed. European Witchcraft (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1969), 56–57; Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch Craze,” in H. R.
Trevor-Roper, Witchcraft and Sorcery (London: Penguin Books, 1972), 132–133.
16 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 2; Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 70.
17 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 37.
18 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 42; Hans Peter Broedel, “The Diffusion of Witch
Mythologies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe
and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 43–44; William Monter, “Late Medieval Legal Anticlericalism,” in The
Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, 221; William Monter, “‘Decriminalization’ and
Its Discontents,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft, 228.
19 Kramer also developed a reputation for corruption. The Dominicans condemned
him in 1490 for embezzlement and for other forms of misbehavior. Sprenger later
repented his role in the witch-hunt and condemned Kramer, as well. Russell, A
History of Witchcraft, 79. Although not entirely accurate, the name Germany
will be used herein, because it is the least cumbersome and the most common
reference to that area to become a nation in 1871. A similar case can be made for
the use of Italy for that nation was not established until 1861.
20 They also included an at least partially forged endorsement from the University
of Cologne theology faculty. Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 79.
21 For some discussion of Malleus and other manuals, see Russell, A History of Witch-
craft, 79; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 56–59; Klaits, Servants of Satan, 44, 141; Geoffrey
Parker, “The European Witchcraze Revisited,” History Today, 30 (November 1980):
24; Monter, European Witchcraft, 56–57; Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch-
Craze,” 132–133; H. C. Eric. Midelfort, “Johann Meyer and the Transformation of
the Insanity Defense,” in The German People and the German Reformation, ed.
Ronnie P. Hsia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 234–261.
22 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 79.
23 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 57. H. C. E. Midelfort, “Johann Weyer and the
Transformation of the Insanity Defense,” The German People and the
German Reformation, ed. R. P. Hsia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1988), 234–261.
24 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 79; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 92. Based on a
reading of John 15:16 of the New Testament, witches were deemed heretics and
their burning seen as ritual purification: Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 86–87.
26 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 38; John H. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the
Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 130–139.
28 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 141, 144–145; Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 79–80.
29 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 93; Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 106.
30 See Henry A. Kamen, European Society, 1500–1700 (London: Hutchinson, 1984),
and Perez Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers, 1500–1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge
(Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 54, 61, 69; Alan
Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York: Harper and
Row, 1970), 192–199.
32 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 82; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 100–118;
Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch-Craze,” 136; H. C. Erik Midelfort,
Witch-Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellec-
tual Foundation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 33; Monter,
Witchcraft in France and Switzerland, 106–107.
33 Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 161; Keith Thomas, Religion
and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971), 562.
34 Lynn White, Jr., “Death and the Devil,” in The Darker Vision of the Renais-
sance, ed. R. S. Kinsman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1974), 26.
See also Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 148–151.
36 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 171–172.
37 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 172–173, 180; Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclope-
dia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York: Girard and Stewart, 1959), 515;
Timothy George, Studies in the History of Christian Thought (Leiden: Brill,
1979), 318, 515.
38 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 20–21, 25 notes 43 & 44.
39 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 141; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 20–21; Midelfort, Witch
Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684, 147; Monter, Witchcraft in
France and Switzerland, 49, 105; E. William Monter, “French and Italian Witch-
craft,” History Today, 30 (November 1980): 31–32.
40 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 82; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 216–217.
41 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 216–221; Tedeschi, “Preliminary Observations,” 42,
242–243.
42 Gustav Henningsen, “The Greatest Witch Trial of All: Navarre, 1609–1614,”
History Today, 30 (November 1980): 36–38; Henry A. Kamen, The Spanish
Inquisition (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), 145; Levack, The Witch-
Hunt, 218–221. See also: Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in
Fifteenth Century Spain (New York: Random House, 1995).
43 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 22. See also: Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 86.
44 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 149–151; Mary Douglas, ed., Witchcraft Confessions
and Accusations (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970), xxi.
45 Although by best estimates over 75 percent of those accused of being witches
during the Great European Witch-Hunt – perhaps as high as 80 percent – were
women, in certain areas, mostly on the periphery, the number varied sig-
nificantly. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, the male-female ratio was
close to even. In Russia and Estonia, men outnumbered women. Levack, The
Witch-Hunt, Fourth Edition, 128–135; Midelfort, Witch Hunting, 281; Klaits,
Servants of Satan, 5; David Nicolls, “The Devil in Renaissance France,” History
Today 30 (November 1980): 27; See also: Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A
New History of the European Witch Hunts (New York: HarperCollins, 1994).
46 Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer, Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Montague
Summers (1484; reprint, New York: Benjamin Blom, 1970), 47.
47 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 51, 53, 66–71, 99; Ronald C. Sawyer, “‘Strangely Handled
in All Her Lyms’: Witchcraft and Healing in Jacobean England,” Journal of Social
History, 22 (Spring 1989): 461–485. Based on data she has gathered from areas such
as England and Scotland, Robin Briggs has questioned the assertion that female
healers were disproportionately represented among the accused. See: Robin Briggs,
“Women as Victims? Witches, Judges and the Community,” French History, 5
(December 1991): 439.
49 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 128–131; William Monter, “Toads and Eucharists: The
Male Witches of Normandy, 1564–1660,” French Historical Studies, 20 (Autumn
1997): 563–564; and Briggs, “Women as Victims?” 441–443. See also: Willem de
Blecourt, “The Making of the Female Witch: Reflections on Witchcraft and
Gender in the Early Modern Period,” Gender in History, 12 (July 2000): 287–309.
50 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 130. See, for example, Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and
the Inquisition in Venice, 1550–1650 (New York: Blackwell, 1989), 254–257.
51 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 130; See Edward Peters, Magician, Witch and the Law
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 120–125; and P. G.
Maxwell-Stuart, Satanic Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth-Century
Scotland (East Linton, UK: Tuckwell Press, 2001), Ch. 6.
52 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 130–131; Monter, “Toads and Eucharists,” 563–595.
53 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 131; Stephen Boyer and Paul Nissenbaum, Salem Pos-
sessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1974), 32.
54 For a critique of this position, see Briggs, “Women as Victims?”, 438–450.
57 Thomas, Religion and the Decline, 530; Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and
Stuart England, 158–160; Monter, Witchcraft in France, 136–137; Gregory Zil-
boorg, The Medical Man and the Witch during the Renaissance (New York: W.
W. Norton, 1941), 204–230; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 145–148; Siegfried Brauer,
“Martin Luther on Witchcraft: A True Reformer?” in The Politics of Gender in
Early Modern Europe, ed. J. R. Brink et al (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century
Journal Publishers, 1989), 29–42; Allison Coudert, “The Myth of the Improved
Status of Protestant Women: The Case of the Witchcraze,” in The Politics of
Gender in Early Modern Europe, 61–94.
58 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 190–191, 199–200; Leonard W. Levy, “Accusatorial and
Inquisitorial Systems of Criminal Procedure in the Beginnings,” in Freedom and
Reform, ed. Harold Hyman and Leonard Levy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967), 16–54; Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons, 12. It might be noted that Ire-
land had even fewer cases than England. The oft cited case of Dame Alice Kyteler
notwithstanding, the cumulative concept of witchcraft had even less impact. The
Irish Parliament passed a witchcraft statute in 1585, but few trials resulted. Levack
has suggested that the unsettled state of Irish justice in the context of English law,
and a reluctance to use the courts to settle local matters, may have discouraged such
formal legal actions. See Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 201. See also Andrew Snedon,
“Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland,” Irish Economic and Social
History, 39 (2012): 15–17; Elwin C. Lapoint, “Irish Immunity to Witch-Hunting:
1534–1711,” Eire-Ireland, 27 (No. 2, 1992): 76–92; and Raymond Gillespie,
“Ireland,” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition (Santa Barbara,
CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), II: 568.
59 Levy, “Accusatorial and Inquisitorial Systems,” 16–54; Levack, The Witch-Hunt,
170. 238–239; Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 92; Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old
and New England, 25.
60 Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 85, 87, 89–91.
61 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 92; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 9; Cohn, Europe’s
Inner Demons, 12–13; Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 84;
Klaits, Servants of Satan, 10.
62 Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England, 87–88, 92–94.
63 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 27–29, 32.
64 Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 12.
65 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 282; Weisman, Witchcraft,
Magic, and Religion, 12; Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 92.
68 Karen Armstrong, “Introduction,” Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full
Story of the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 82–84; Kittredge,
Witchcraft in Old and New England, 285; Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 96;
Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 59.
69 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 278.
70 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 278; Russell, A History of
Witchcraft, 97.
71 Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 12; Levy, “Accusatorial and
Inquisitorial Systems,” 102.
73 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 331, 334.
74 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 100; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 92, 199.
75 Russell, A History of Witchcraft, 100, 102–103; Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 3–4.
See also Trevor-Roper, “The European Witch-Craze.”
2 “Having Familiarity with the Devil”
The purpose of Chapter 1 was to provide a brief overview of the Great

European Witch-Hunt, so we might better see the roots of the Salem witch
trials in the European experience and understand that, although somewhat
late in that experience, the Salem trials were neither historically out of place
nor greatly different. For much the same reason, in this chapter we will
explore the history of witch-hunts in seventeenth-century America and, in
particular, New England.
Witch-Hunts in Seventeenth-Century America

As might be expected, belief in witchcraft in the European colonies of
America was widespread, the specific nature of that belief and the response
of the authorities in each group of colonies paralleling that of the mother
country. In Dutch territory, the Hudson River Valley, there was only one
case of an individual being charged with being a witch, and that occurred in
the town of Easthampton, which was populated by Englishmen who had
migrated south out of New England.1 Perhaps as many as forty-three indi-
viduals were charged in New France, territory that included parts of what
was to become the United States, but they were seldom convicted, and then
only mildly punished.2 The single notable exception involved Daniel Vuil.
Vuil, a Huguenot, was accused of casting a spell on a fourteen-year-old girl
with whom he had fallen in love, after he had been rejected by her parents.
He was executed.3
Witch-hunts were much more common in Spanish America, and to a
lesser extent in Portuguese America. Soon after Columbus arrived in 1492
Spanish Catholic missionaries arrived in large numbers along the southern
tier of what would become the United States and further south in Central
and South America. In considerably fewer numbers, Portuguese missionaries
arrived in what has become Brazil after Portugal took possession of that
territory in 1500. Both were intent upon evangelizing their newly acquired
territories and their inhabitants. Much like their European counterparts to
the north, they brought with them their concepts of witchcraft. In the
second half of the sixteenth century, when enslaved Africans were brought
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-3
to both territories, their notions of witchcraft were added to the mix,
resulting in a hybrid concept that reflected the influence of all three sources.
As Iris Gareis has argued, the hybrid concept of witchcraft was not the
result of a “casual jumbling up of rites and techniques,” but rather derived
from a “transcultural processes of adoption, modification, and incorporation
of selected elements that conformed to … each segment of the colonial
population,” as made sense in their own belief systems.4
Much like their fellow European missionaries in other parts of the
Americas, the Spanish and Portuguese believed that Native American deities
were demons, a concept Native Americans did not share. They understood
their deities to be neither entirely good nor bad, but capable of being both
depending on differing circumstances. Further, the Spanish and Portuguese
distinguished between witchcraft and sorcery. The former required a pact
with the Devil, who provided witches with powers Europeans commonly
associated with witches, including flying through the air, shapeshifting,
afflicting others, and tempting others to do the Devil’s bidding. Sorcery, or
the use of magic and shamanic activity, was widely practiced by both gen-
ders. Rather than being dependent on the Devil, however, they relied on the
use of spells, potions, plants, and other natural materials and rituals. Sor-
cerers were well known in the community and were often sought for help
when other more natural remedies proved ineffective. Where they were
believed to be doing harm, they might be charged with witchcraft, but that
was seldom the case. Moreover, charges of sorcery were often dismissed by
European authorities as superstition, and if charges were brought, subject to
lesser penalties.5
In New Spain, the Holy Office of the Inquisition set out to destroy
witchcraft, but, much as in Spain where the Holy Office dealt mostly with
conversos, in the colonies it tended to focus on Native Americans and
slaves. It was incorporated into the larger drive to evangelize Native Amer-
icans and slaves and eradicate pagan religion in the process. Witch-hunts
were few but pursued with fervor and involved comparatively large num-
bers. Only two major witch-hunts occurred in Spanish America, both of
which occurred under the tribunal at today’s Cartagena, Columbia. During
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it adjudicated more sorcery and
witchcraft cases than either of the two other tribunals – 169 as compared to
136 and 74 in Lima and Mexico City (where the records are incomplete).
Confessions were common, usually prompted by the use of torture, but none
were executed in any of the three venues. By way of example, in Mexico
City, between 1536 and 1543, the tribunal charged twenty people, including
fifteen women, of whom at least five were lower-class black women or
“mixed bloods.” All were punished, some by public whipping, but none
were executed. The number of cases heard in Lima and Mexico City
increased during the eighteenth century. The documentation is incomplete,
but it appears that there were an additional 59 cases, and, once again, none
were executed. In 1614, the Supreme Council of the Spanish Inquisition
“Having Familiarity with the Devil” 33
demanded extra caution in witchcraft cases, and executions ceased with one
notable exception. In 1675 authorities hanged four Native Americans in
what is now New Mexico for practicing sorcery, but also for killing seven
missionaries. The execution helped trigger the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.6
In Portuguese Brazil, for which, in the absence of inquisitorial records,
there is much less documentation, trials followed a similar pattern. Brazil
had no tribunal of its own. Commissioners of the Inquisition tried minor
cases; others were referred to authorities in Lisbon. During the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, most were individual prosecutions for witchcraft and
sorcery. In the eighteenth century, however, the emphasis shifted to groups
of Native Americans and Africans, groups of African slaves, who were sus-
pected of conspiring against their masters, and Native Americans gathered
in what were believed to be witches’ assemblies.7
Finally, consistent with each of the preceding colonizations, Richard
Godbeer has written: “Fear of witches was embedded within the culture that
English migrants brought with them as they crossed the Atlantic to settle in
North America, and so it is not surprising that witch-hunting became a part
of the[ir] colonial experience.” Following England’s example, the number of
witch trials and convictions in the British colonies was low, excepting in New
England and, possibly, Bermuda. There were several cases, including five
executions, in Bermuda during the second half of the seventeenth century,
beginning with the arrival of Scottish servants with their different historical
and conceptual experiences into a dominantly English Puritan environment,
ruled by a governor sympathetic to attempts to ferret out witches. Fifteen
individuals, twelve women and three men, were initially charged with witch-
craft, the records of nearly all of their cases making mention of various forms
of maleficia rather than heresy. Five were executed, including four women. By
the end of the century, when the Bermuda trials all but ended (there was one
incompletely recorded case during the early years of the eighteenth century),
the number of accused reached twenty-one, including sixteen women. One
more woman was executed, but most of the rest of the cases ended in dis-
missal. There is little in the records by which to draw a profile of the accused.
All we have is one historian’s comment that the trials involved “harmless old
women and half-crazy men.”8
There were occasional trials in various British colonies of mainland North
America, including Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland. In Virginia, between 1627 and 1705, nine cases of accused witches
made it to court; ten defamation cases involving witchcraft accusations were
heard as well, most of them after 1668. Only one of the accused, however,
William Harding of Northumberland County, in 1665, was convicted, and he
was whipped and banished. Unique to Virginia were three shipboard
executions of women accused of witchcraft, but little is known of their cases.9
Aside from Virginia’s shipboard executions, Maryland has the distinction
of being the only British colony of mainland North America outside of New
England wherein an execution for witchcraft took place. Rebecca Fowler
was hanged in 1685, but the details of her case have not survived. Otherwise,
historian Francis Neal Parke has found only five cases in colonial Maryland,
four occurring between 1665 and 1686, the last in 1712. Four of the five
involved women, and although the records are incomplete, no more than two
(including the man) were convicted. All other cases in British America
(numbering well over 200, leading to at least 33 executions) occurred in
New England, over half during the Salem witch trials.10
Witch-Hunts in Seventeenth-Century New England

As was the case in the Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies of the Americas,
the British colonists assigned Native Americans to Satan almost from the
start. They too believed that prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Americas
had belonged to the Devil, and that the Devil had a grip on its native inha-
bitants – that the Devil “visibly and palpably reigne[d] there,” as the Rever-
end William Crashaw of Virginia put it. As David Lovejoy has suggested,
given their religious intensity, New England Puritans may have exaggerated
the Devil’s role, thereby providing themselves with an explanation for their
minimal success in evangelizing the “heathen,” as well as a rationale for the
bloody Pequot (1637) and King Philip’s (1675) Wars. Native Americans were
seldom actually charged with witchcraft, a crime reserved almost exclusively
for Christians, but, as will be discussed in the case of the Salem witch trials,
the role of Native Americans in those trials was significant.11
It is not entirely clear why the overwhelming number of witch-hunts in
British America occurred in New England. Richard Godbeer has argued,
that: “New Englanders believed that … God and the Devil were constantly
at work … in their day-to-day lives, testing and tempting, rewarding and
punishing as each individual deserved.” Like their European counterparts, as
explained by the Puritan ministry, they believed that God had ultimate
authority, so that if the Devil intervened in people’s lives, the Devil did so
with God’s permission. Where the intervention was seen as an expression of
God’s wrath for any misdeeds, it prompted self-examination, individually or
collectively, repentance, and, in some cases, the ferreting out and elimination
of the cause.12
Once again, as was the case in our discussion of Matthew Hopkins’s
activity in England, the reader might be tempted to blame it on the Puritans.
As Karen Armstrong has concluded:
[A]s Salem shows, they [the Puritans] brought their phobias and
frustrations with them. They also brought from Europe an inadequate
conception of religion. Instead of seeing compassion as the primary
religious virtue, the Puritans of New England – latter-day crusaders –
cultivated a harsh, unyielding righteousness that was quick to judge and
condemn. Instead of seeing God as all-powerful and all-forgiving, the
Puritans saw Satan everywhere.13
Further, although their authority was beginning to wane by the 1690s,
Puritans dominated seventeenth-century New England and, as some have
argued, the ministry may have been anxious to use any pretext to re-establish
their influence. There is little evidence, however, that levels of activity in New
England followed lines of heightened religiosity exclusively.
In their sermons, especially at public executions for witchcraft, ministers
linked maleficia and diabolism. They occasionally interrogated the accused
and provided advice for public officials and the courts. But over the course
of the century, Puritan ministers were not disproportionately numbered among
the proponents of the trials. The records show that many were opposed and
even instrumental in controlling them. Perhaps, then, without exonerating the
Puritan ministry from any culpability, George Lyman Kittredge was right in
warning that to tie witch trials in New England to religious opinions alone
would be a serious error; the people of seventeenth-century New England
believed in witchcraft not because they were Puritan, but because they were
people of their time. To quote John Demos, witchcraft “belonged to the regular
business of life in premodern times; or at least it belonged to the belief system,
the value structure, the predominant psychology of those times,” But then, that
leaves us with the problem of explaining the large number of cases in New
England.14
As we have seen, European witch-hunts were most common in areas of
great turmoil, whether it be political, social, economic, or religious, and of
such turmoil the people of New England at the end of the seventeenth century
had more than their fair share. That, combined with their unique sense of
having been chosen by God to establish a New Jerusalem and their fear that
they had failed in their mission, led Puritan New Englanders to establish
blame for that failure. Upon their arrival in the wilderness, John Winthrop
had warned them that if they failed, God’s wrath would be turned against
them, and there was evidence by 1692 that indeed that was happening.15 What
they needed to do was find out who was responsible, punish them, and
thereby return to God’s path and merit His favor once again.
New Englanders, as typical Englishmen, were steeped in the lore of
witchcraft. As Richard Godbeer has found, “alongside Protestant Christianity,
there co-existed a tangled skein of folk, magical beliefs and practices that the
colonists brought with them from England.” “Folk magic,” he has explained,
“was based on the assumption that men and women could wield occult power
for their own benefit,” including divining and healing, the latter commonly
associated with “cunning folks,” or those who were believed to have expertise
in such matters. Further, it was believed that “cunning folks” could exercise
their powers for good or ill, thereby positioning them to either be valued
members of the community or a threat. To use the anthropological term, they
were magico-religious, and it is that with which Puritan ministers were parti-
cularly concerned – not with those who had rejected Puritanism, for they were
few. Puritan ministers emphasized God’s absolute sovereignty, insisting that
everything in the world was determined by God, and they urged people to
submit to His sovereignty without exception. They made great strides in per-
suading their flocks to that point of view, but their victory over pagan practices
was not absolute, largely because so many of the laity did not see any conflict
between the two.16
While not questioning that magic worked, Puritan ministers preached that
the Devil intervened to assist those who used it, thereby luring them into his
service, and condemned any form of magic as blasphemous and diabolical.
Nevertheless, most of their flock ignored ministerial warnings and, as they
had for centuries, continued to practice fortune-telling, divining, healing, and
the use of charms and potions to ward off evil or attract good fortune, love,
and wealth. Because such practices were informal and not part of any coherent
doctrinal system or organized institutional structure, they were so elusive as to
defy any counterattack. As long as they did not elicit any significant opposition,
which was most of the time, the practices were a nearly indistinguishable part
of everyday life.17
New Englanders added little to the concept of witchcraft they inherited
from England. For ministers, witchcraft may have been about repudiating
Christ and worshipping the Devil, but for the common people it was pri-
marily about doing harm. Thus, although the laws of seventeenth-century
New England embodied the theological views of witchcraft and demanded
proof of direct contact between the accused and the Devil, lay folk tended to
focus on the suspect’s malevolence. They were more concerned with a witch’s
use of occult skills to do harm. And as Richard Godbeer has speculated, this
“disjuncture between legal conceptions of witchcraft and popular testimony
about witchcraft made conviction extremely difficult.”18
As was common in England, most cases in New England were initiated by
people charging their neighbors, with whom they had a close personal rela-
tionship, with maleficia. or using witchcraft to harm members of their family
or to destroy their livestock and personal possessions. Given the compara-
tively small communities, charges were essentially face-to-face interactions
within communities where relationships – familial, spatial, gendered, and eco-
nomic – became charged with suspicion, anger, and revenge. Richard Godbeer
has summarized those scenarios in which such charges were often brought. He
described a scenario in which a neighbor refused to loan something to another
and then felt guilty for having done so. When the disappointed neighbor called
out the person who refused his or her request, and that was followed by some
misfortune, the calling out could be interpreted as having resulted from a curse
laid by the disappointed neighbor. Variations might include loans that went
awry, including instances where one neighbor blamed another for damaged
property, or some other misfortune. What was common to these scenarios was
the assumption that the one neighbor had been mistreated by the other through
the use of witchcraft. One important consideration is that the transgression
could not be explained by other means, meaning natural causes, and that it
did not rise to the level where civil action could otherwise be taken without
establishing a diabolical connection.19
Much as Keith Thomas and Alan D. Macfarlane have found in England,
charges in New England followed lines of intrinsic tension and hostility,
when social values intersected with supernatural beliefs. In England, such
tension was especially common in the early modern period, when the sense
of community of the traditional English village was disintegrating. Change
was hardest on dependent members of the community – the poor and
widowed, for example – whose subsistence depended on the generosity of
their neighbors. They were often the first to be charged with witchcraft, and
their accusers were likely to be those who had denied the accused’s request
for assistance, thereby failing to conform to the traditional code of com-
munity behavior. In the process, they not only felt guilty about their moral
lapse but also, when some misfortune befell them, they projected that guilt
onto the accused by holding them morally culpable for the incident. Not
surprisingly, the marginally better-off were particularly well-represented
among the accusers.20
There may have been fewer truly needy in seventeenth-century New
England, but the same thesis applies. When the traditional mutuality or
communal pattern upon which the first settlers had depended began to
unravel, as it did in the late-seventeenth century, the same feelings
emerged. In fact, it may have been even more pronounced in New England
because of its emphasis on the covenanted community. John Winthrop had
told the Puritans upon their arrival in Massachusetts that God required
their harmony if His mission for them was to succeed, but as the century
wore on in the face of the new social and cultural values and attitudes that
accompanied New England’s transformation from a traditional rural,
agricultural society to a more cosmopolitan, urban, and commercial world,
that harmony was lost. Whatever sense of responsibility and charity had
characterized New England at its founding was declining.21
Given all of this, John Demos has gathered the following statistics con-
cerning those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England. Of
all suspects for whom he could determine social class, 73 percent were
below the midpoint on his social scale. Those with declining fortunes,
though not necessarily poor, were also disproportionately represented
among the accused, and both were much more likely to be aggressively
prosecuted and convicted.22
As was true in England, 80 percent of those charged with witchcraft in
New England were women, and at least half of those men who were charged
were the husbands, sons, or close associates of women cried out against first.
Men among those charged were less likely to be tried and convicted, and if
convicted, their sentences were usually less severe. The only partial exceptions
to this rule, and it was a matter of degree in both instances, were the two
large-scale witch-hunts of Hartford and Salem. In the former case, the portion
of females was 64 percent, in the latter, 73 percent, suggesting that, as in
Europe, when fear of witchcraft was particularly strong, stereotypes tended to
crumble but not to collapse.23
As Elizabeth Reis has found, Puritan ministers did not teach that women
were by nature more evil than men, but they did see them as weaker and there-
fore more susceptible to sinful impulses and seduction and possession by the
Devil, much as Eve had been seduced by the Devil and then seduced Adam. A
symptom of this perceived weakness was where a woman was seen as having
forsaken her “place” in the gendered hierarchy, wherein she was to be a “sweet
and intimate companion for men,” and her role as “a necessary good” became
that of “a necessary evil.” As Carol Karlsen has put it: “There was no pace in
this vision for the belief that women were incapable of fulfilling such a role. Nor
was there a place in the ideal Puritan society for women who refused to fill it.”24
As was the case in England, the accused of New England were largely
older women, but still middle-aged. At a time when sixty was considered the
beginning of old age, 67 percent of those prosecuted for witchcraft were
between the ages of forty and sixty. At the time they were first suspected, 82
percent fell into that age bracket. As John Demos has explained, women in
their forties and fifties had reached their peak in terms of authority or power
in the Puritan community; they had fully realized their role in society and
had presided over a household of several children, servants, and apprentices.
The accused, however, generally were not so accomplished. Never-marrieds
were not disproportionately represented among the accused in New Eng-
land, but being a widow was clearly a liability, and even more vulnerable
were those with fewer children than average. Twice the proportion of the
accused as that of the general population were childless, and the percentage
of those who bore fewer children was higher as well.25
Carol Karlsen has argued that women over age forty were singled out
because they lived in a society in which men exercised substantial legal,
political, ideological, and economic authority over women. Witch-hunting,
therefore, was a means of reaffirming this authority at a time when some
women were testing those constraints. Especially vulnerable, Karlsen notes,
were women without brothers and widows who remained single or remar-
ried but who had no sons by their previous marriage. Both stood to inherit
property, and they stood in the way of the orderly transmission of property
from one generation of males to another and were resented for it.26
Of particular importance in New England was the accused’s relationship
to the community and to his or her family. To use Demos’s words, “a
peaceful household was seen as the foundation of all social order.” Thus,
any suspicion that a man, or especially a woman, caused domestic dis-
harmony invited unfavorable notice from neighbors, and if it persisted,
suspicion of witchcraft. Not surprisingly, men and women who had crim-
inal records were disproportionately represented among the accused wit-
ches of seventeenth-century New England. Demos set the rate at a
minimum of 36 percent, but he allowed that the figure could be as high as
63 percent. Either level is significant when it is compared to a crime rate
for the general population of from 10 to 20 percent, and, among women,
of only 5 percent.27
Just as interesting, however, is the type of crime with which witches were
charged. When Demos organized the specific charges brought against those
included in his study, he found that the single largest group by far (41 percent)
had been charged with assaultive speech, and the rest with theft, lying, sex
offenses, physical assault, resisting authority, arson, and fraud. Assaultive
speech included slander and defamation, mostly, but it also referred to “filthy”
and “scandalous” speech. As historian Jane Kamensky has found, “disorderly
speech,” when employed by women, was seen as especially disruptive of the
social order and particularly damaging for seventeenth-century New England
women on a number of different counts, including their being more likely to be
charged with being a witch.28
In sum, historians have drawn a composite image of witches in
seventeenth-century New England as being comparatively poor, female,
middle-aged, and married or widowed; having fewer than the average
number of children; often being in trouble with the law or in conflict
with friends and family; having practiced some form of medical healing; and
appearing abrasive in style and contentious in character.29 Few suspects
conformed to all of these specifications, but the better someone fit this
description, the more likely she or he would be accused of witchcraft.
Another similar portrait can be drawn of the victims of witchcraft.
As Elizabeth Reis has argued, women were inclined to see themselves
as “unfit and unworthy” and vulnerable to the Devil’s influence. As a
result – perhaps as a way of convincing themselves and others that they
had not succumbed to such a weakness – some saw that weakness in
other women and played an active role in accusing them. But those
individuals in seventeenth-century New England best known for being the
victims of witches were the teenagers of Salem village in 1692. When we
look beyond 1692 to the century as a whole, however, and include all of
the victims, not just the psychically or spiritually afflicted, a more com-
plicated picture emerges. To begin with, 55 percent of all victims of
witchcraft were men, with young men from the ages of twenty to thirty-nine
accounting for over half of that number. And, among women, the single largest
group of victims was between the ages of twenty and thirty-nine. They
accounted for 14 percent of all cases, 13 percent being women from the age of
forty to fifty-nine and only 9 percent falling between the ages of ten and
nineteen.30
Why these groups were particularly prone to becoming victims is unclear.
John Demos has suggested that for men in their twenties and thirties it
might have resulted from the frustration they felt at not being able to realize
what was expected of them, and what they no doubt wanted, namely their
acquiring property and marrying. As the century drew to an end, there was
less and less land available to them. Menopausal women, he has offered,
seem to have been more preoccupied with body states, illness and injury,
and morbidity and child mortality, while young women in their teens found
their place in society awkward at best.31
As to the young women in of Salem, who claimed to be afflicted and
bewitched, in the seventeenth century, much like today, adolescence was a
period of transition from childhood to adulthood, of the trying on of roles
and of the anticipation and anxiety that produces. In the seventeenth cen-
tury, however, the choices were fewer for young women, and most were
ready-made. Quite likely, their fits of disobedience and unruly and lewd
behavior, challenging the authority of their parents, ministers, and magis-
trates, were a reaction, understood as such by them or not, to conventional
standards and received authority. They were forced into a subordinate
position within their households and communities, especially those who had
been orphaned in recent Indian attacks (a subject to be addressed in a sub-
sequent chapter). In sum, it is not surprising that the girls struck out against
middle-aged women – women of about their mothers’ age, those who had
the greatest control over their lives. As Carol Karlsen has argued, possession
mediated between a young woman’s rage at her place in the world and her
reluctance to acknowledge or validate that rage. By claiming and perhaps
convincing themselves that they were possessed, they could express anger
without having to acknowledge full responsibility for such feelings and shift
attention away from their own moral failings to those they accused, as well
as relish their newfound power.32
Richard Weisman has added to this portrait of victims. He too found that
most victims of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England were men. But
he divided charges of witchcraft into two categories: ordinary witchcraft, or
those that involved injury to the person or his or her property; and affliction or
possession, wherein the victim’s thoughts and actions were altered or con-
trolled. Over 90 percent of the cases prior to 1692 were of the former type, the
latter being prevalent only during the Salem trials.33
In the former, the victim commonly traced the source of the malefic, or
harmful, action to someone with whom he or she had had a transaction, and
who had been dissatisfied with the results of that transaction. Thus, both the
suspect and motive were apparent. In the latter, no such pre-existing contact
was evident, and therefore no simple identification was possible. A third party,
a family member or friend, often stepped forward to provide an acceptable
interpretation of the victim’s words and deeds. Moreover, as Weisman has
suggested, the afflicted or possessed displayed “greater vulnerability to
mystical harm” and seemed particularly helpless to defend themselves.
Thus, not surprisingly, he found that although the overwhelming majority
of victims of ordinary witchcraft were men, women comprised nearly 88
percent of the afflicted or possessed, and 79 percent of those women were
single and twenty-one years of age or younger!34
This information indicates that whatever might be said of women’s
inferiority to men in Puritan society as a whole, the role of unmarried
younger women was even more problematic. Married women, especially
those with several children, had at least some authority and legal rights in
seventeenth-century New England, perhaps even more than elsewhere in the
West. They often worked side by side with their husbands on the farm or in
the family business; they had some protection under the law from abuse,
and upon the death of their husbands, they retained certain property rights
not provided elsewhere. Unmarried women under age twenty-one, in con-
trast, had no such rights. Further, they were often removed from the family
home to serve as maidservants to neighbors, thereby eliminating even that
level of protection. Not surprisingly then, Weisman has found, among the
victims of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England, there was a
“close affinity between social subordination and this expression [affliction or
possession] of victimization.”35
As in England, suspicions of witchcraft in New England were usually
handled extralegally at the local level through intermediaries like ministers,
physicians, or magistrates. Formal charges were usually avoided, as many no
doubt feared the countersuit of slander any failed charges of witchcraft would
likely, and commonly did, evoke. Often, as has been noted, counter-magic
was employed and, occasionally, retaliatory physical violence. But when
formal charges were brought, usually by one neighbor against another, court
procedures closely paralleled those used in England. They were handled by
secular, rather than ecclesiastical, courts.36
Laws on witchcraft in New England were framed in theological terms
treating the accused as “heretical servants of the Devil,” seeking proof of
diabolical allegiance. They followed the English statute of 1604, but their
wording was more closely drawn from the Old Testament. By 1647, all of
the New England colonies had incorporated the death penalty for conviction
into their legal codes. That of Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1641 (modified
only slightly in its wording in 1648) was typical: “If any man or woman be a
witch (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit), they shall be put to
death. Exodus 22:18; Leviticus 20:27; Deuteronomy 18:10.” Elsewhere in
New England, it might be described as a “solemn compaction with the
Devil,” or simply as “giving entertainment to Satan,” but it was always
deemed punishable by hanging. The statutes made no reference to maleficia,
or the use of diabolical powers to do harm, but in practice that was the
source of nearly all complaints.37
Formal charges were usually brought by men, who just as often acted on
behalf of women, who lacked legal standing. The cases that resulted passed
through a judicial system that resembled England’s. There were three levels
of courts in Massachusetts. The lowest level consisted of local magistrates
who were empowered by colonial legislatures to hear and decide certain
minor cases. County courts, manned by three to five magistrates, constituted
the second level. The filing of depositions against putative witches could
occur at either level, but given witchcraft’s status as a capital offense, neither
had jurisdiction. They simply decided whether sufficient evidence existed to
merit trial, whereupon they referred the case and the evidence they had
gathered to the upper house of the Massachusetts legislature, the Court of
Assistants. If that body found the evidence credible, it summoned a grand
jury, and if the grand jury issued an indictment, trial by jury in a superior
court of law followed.38
Witchcraft was a capital crime requiring two witnesses. Moreover, in
order to convict, witnesses had to give evidence of a diabolical pact as well
as maleficia. Given the private nature of a pact, such evidence was difficult
to obtain. Confession was the surest route to conviction, but prior to 1692
only 7 percent of the accused confessed. As in England, the easiest evidence
to gather was signs of witches’ teats, with which witches nourished their
familiars. But ministers and magistrates urged that precautions be taken to
assure that the validity of any such finding meet with the “approbation of
some able physicians.”39
As we shall see, the exercise of caution was largely cast to the wind
during the Salem witch-hunt of 1692. Testimony by those who believed they
had seen a witch’s familiar was allowed, but it was difficult to ascertain or
prove, except where spectral evidence was allowed, as was the case in
Salem. Spectral evidence was based on the belief that demons could assume
the identity of – and only of – the person who had signed a pact with the
Devil. Where the assumption held, it was irrefutable evidence, but the
assumption generally did not hold. Theologians in England and New Eng-
land simply refused to state unequivocally that the Devil could not employ
the specter of an innocent person, and therefore prior to 1692 courts could
not rely on such testimony for conviction.40
In sum, the laws of seventeenth-century New England, when properly
applied, made conviction for witchcraft difficult, and the record shows that
most of the time they were properly applied. Prior to 1692, of the sixty-one
known prosecutions for witchcraft in New England, eight of whom were
charged two or three times, sixteen (perhaps only fourteen) were convicted
and executed, for a rate of 26.2 percent, and as the century progressed, the
frequency of both declined. There were nineteen witch trials during the
1660s, six during the 1670s, and eight during the 1680s. There were no
executions for witchcraft in the twenty-five years after 1663.41
At first glance, then, witch-hunting in seventeenth-century New England
seems to have been a minor disturbance, even by British standards. That,
however, was not the case. To begin with, in order to contrast what hap-
pened in 1692 to what had occurred during the preceding years of the cen-
tury, the numbers for the Salem witch trials have been omitted. When we
add them, we are forced to draw quite different conclusions.
First of all, the overall record shows that the 250 cases in New England
were not uniformly distributed. Indeed, they were as geographically con-
centrated and, therefore, locally as devastating as in England and in many
parts of the European continent. Prior to 1692, in Massachusetts, for
example, the counties of Essex and Norfolk in the northeast, and Hampshire
in the west accounted for approximately two-thirds of the known legal
complaints brought against witches. The Salem witch trials added at least
135 of the 150 legal actions taken in 1692 to Essex County alone!42
Second, if we take into account New England’s much smaller population
and shorter history, its rate of indictments and executions for witchcraft
was several times larger than England’s. It may have fallen short of areas
such as Germany, Switzerland, France, and even Scotland, but it was large
enough to suggest that witch-hunting in New England was not such a minor
affair after all.43
Some Notable Witch Trials in Seventeenth-Century New England

Although she was never formally charged, the first recorded case of suspected
witchcraft in seventeenth-century New England was that of Jane Hawkins of
Boston. Hawkins was banished from Massachusetts to Rhode Island in the
aftermath of the Antinomian controversy of 1636–1637, which also involved
the better-known Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer. Apparently, Hawkins
returned to Massachusetts, because she was banished a second time in 1641.
In both instances, in his journal, Governor John Winthrop made it clear that
he suspected witchcraft. In April 1638, he wrote that Hawkins, a midwife
who had been present at the birth of Mary Dyer’s “monster” (a badly
deformed fetus), had left the colony, and that her leaving was appropriate
“for it was known, that she used to give young women oil of mandrakes and
other stuff to cause conception.” She was suspected of being a witch, he
continued, because “it was credibly reported that when she gave any med-
icines (for she practiced physic) she would ask the party, if she did believe,
she could help her, etc.” In 1640, Winthrop added that even before she
came to Massachusetts, while Hawkins lived in England, “divers ministers
and others” suspected her of having “familiarity with the Devil.”44
Alice Young was the first to be executed in New England for witchcraft.
Little is known of the case except for a brief note in Winthrop’s journal,
that she lived in Windsor, Connecticut, and that she was executed at Hart-
ford in 1647. It was quite likely her grandson who, in 1677, sued a man for
saying that his mother was a witch, and that he looked like one – a charge
not as easily dismissed then as now!45
Margaret Jones of Charlestown was the first person to be charged and
executed for being a witch about whom we know much at all. Not sur-
prisingly, she was a healer, or a “cunning woman,” and, like Jane
Hawkins, a midwife. Margaret was married to Thomas Jones, who also
was suspected of witchcraft, but he was never prosecuted. Margaret was
tried in May and executed in June 1648.46
John Winthrop explained that the evidence used against Margaret Jones
made the following points: that she was “found to have such a malignant
touch” that it caused her patients to go deaf, vomit, or experience other
types of pain and sickness; that she employed medicines that “had extra-
ordinary violent effects”; that she told those who would not accept her
treatment that they would continue to suffer; that she had foretold future
events that had actually come to pass; and that she had two witch’s teats “in
her secret parts.” When the first teat was discovered, it seemed “as fresh as
if it had been newly sucked,” but soon thereafter it withered and the other
developed elsewhere. While Jones was in prison, Winthrop continued, she
had been seen with a child in her arms. That child, however, vanished when
a prison official approached, only to reappear twice more, in one case before
another woman who fell ill, only to be cured by Jones. And, finally, Win-
throp noted that at her trial Margaret Jones was “very intemperate, lying
notoriously and railing upon the jury and witnesses.” She died “in the like
distemper,” he added, and at the same hour that she was executed “there
was a very great tempest at Connecticut, which blew down many trees.”47
Mary Johnson, of Wethersfield, Connecticut, was the first to confess to
having entered into a pact with the Devil. She was apparently a servant, and
she had been convicted of thievery in 1646. The record of her indictment
dated December 7, 1648, simply reports that a jury had found that “by her
own confession” she was guilty of “familiarity with the Devil.” Cotton
Mather, in his Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Posses-
sions (1689), wrote that Johnson reported that the Devil had tempted her
with many “services”; that when her master blamed her for not carrying out
the ashes, the Devil had cleared the hearth for her; and that when her master
had sent her into the field to drive out the hogs, the Devil helped her and
made her laugh in the process! Johnson admitted that her first familiarity
with the Devil had come about as a result of her discontent and complaints;
that she was guilty of the murder of a child; and that she had been guilty of
“uncleanness with men and devils.” In the end, Mather added, Mary John-
son repented and “went out of this world with many hopes of mercy
through the merit of Jesus Christ.”48
Sometimes cases of witchcraft took years, escalating from suspicions to
indictments. One of the first such cases in New England was that of Jane
Walford of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Between 1648 and 1669, Walford
was charged with being a witch at least three times. She was never convicted,
but neither she nor her children ever escaped the onus of the charge.49 Other
examples include John Godfrey, of Essex County, Massachusetts, who was
charged with witchcraft several times from 1639 to 1669, and Eunice Cole, a
resident of Hampton, New Hampshire, who was first charged with witchcraft
in 1656 and last charged in 1689.50
One of the most complex cases, however, was that of Mary Parsons. It
began in 1649 when the Widow Marshfield of Windsor, Connecticut,
brought suit for defamation against Parsons. The court found Parsons guilty
and sentenced her to be whipped and to pay five pounds reparation to the
Widow Marshfield. Two years later, in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts,
following the death of two of her children and holding him responsible,
Mary accused her husband, Hugh Parsons, of witchcraft. At about the same
time, Hugh Parsons was suspected of seeking revenge on the town minister,
George Moxon, by causing the death of two of his children after Parsons
and Moxon had quarreled over brick work Parsons had done for him. Town
residents offered some thirty-five depositions against Parsons in the matter,
and he was arrested.51
Hugh Parsons was taken into custody on March 1, 1651, and examined.
Mary was summoned as a witness, and she continued to insist that her
husband was a witch, but she also spoke as though she was one. She
admitted having spoken to the Devil, for example, and of having been per-
suaded by him to participate in a witches’ meeting at which her husband
was present. Not surprisingly, Mary was soon indicted as well. She was
tried – the Widow Marshfield appearing as a witness against her – and
found not guilty of witchcraft, but she was then indicted for the murder of
one of her children. This time she confessed, and on May 13, 1651, she was
sentenced to be hanged. There is no record of her having been executed, so
she may have died in jail. Meanwhile, in 1652, a jury found Hugh Parsons
guilty of witchcraft, but the General Court overturned the verdict, and he
was set free.52
One of the best-known cases of witchcraft in seventeenth-century New
England was that of Anne Hibbins. Anne was the wife of the merchant
William Hibbins, who served as a magistrate and as a member of the
Massachusetts Court of Assistants. Anne and her husband were highly
regarded, and as both were members of the Boston church, neither
seemed likely candidates for witchcraft charges. But then things started
going wrong for Anne. In 1640, she was censured by her church for
various reasons, including continuing to accuse a carpenter of over-
charging for work he had done on her house, when the matter had been
settled, and violating “the rule of the Apostle in usurping authority over
him whom God hath made her head and husband.” Several months later,
when she was still unrepentant, the church excommunicated her. Hibbins
was widowed in 1654 and charged with witchcraft the next year. The
jury returned a guilty verdict, but the judges refused to accept it, and a
second trial took place in 1656. Once again, Hibbins was condemned,
and this time she was executed.53
All of the preceding cases were limited in scope; they did not extend much
beyond the immediate family, and they seldom involved more than one
person. The only witch-hunt prior to 1692 of any greater size occurred in
Hartford, Connecticut in the 1660s, perhaps influenced by recent witch-hunt
activity in England. It resulted in accusations against at least eight people,
four of whom were executed. The Hartford witch-hunt began in 1662 when
Ann Cole began to suffer what was deemed affliction. She accused Elizabeth
Seager of tormenting her, and she was supported in her charge by her
neighbors. She also named Rebecca Greensmith. Soon, an eight-year-old
girl, Elizabeth Kelly, fell ill – an illness that eventually proved to be
fatal – and she blamed Goodwife Ayres. Accusations were lodged against
Mrs. Ayres’s husband, who, when questioned, seconded Ann Cole’s
condemnation of Rebecca Greensmith, which soon led to the arrest of
Rebecca’s husband Nathaniel.54
In December 1662, the Greensmiths were indicted for having “familiarity
with the Devil.” Rebecca, described only as “aged,” confessed and, in the
process, implicated her husband. She also reported having attended meetings
in the woods with Elizabeth Seager, Goodwife Ayres, Judith Varlet, and several
others from the area. The reasons for Rebecca Greensmith’s confession are
unclear. Perhaps in her aging mind she had come to believe that she was
familiar with the Devil. If she did it to escape execution, she was mistaken,
because she and her husband were executed in early 1663.55
Mary Barnes, of nearby Farmington, whose connection to the case is
likely but unclear, was executed at about the same time. The Ayres and
Judith Varlet escaped to New York, but Elizabeth Seager was brought to
court three times. In 1663, in two separate cases, she was found guilty of
adultery but innocent of witchcraft. Two years later, she was charged with
witchcraft again and this time convicted and sentenced to be hanged, but
Connecticut Governor John Winthrop Jr. commuted her sentence. And all
of this, historians surmise, may have begun over a disputed inheritance.56
We shall conclude this brief sampling of seventeenth-century New England
witch trials with two of perhaps the most influential cases on the Salem witch
trials. They were the cases of Elizabeth Knapp and Mary Glover and the
Goodwin children. The details of the first were recorded by the Reverend
Samuel Willard of Groton, Massachusetts, and published in Increase Mather’s
Illustrious Providences (1684); the second was covered and publicized by the
Reverend Cotton Mather in Memorable Providences (1689).
The Knapp case began in 1671 in Samuel Willard’s home with his servant,
the sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Knapp. Knapp came from a respectable
family. Her father was a prosperous farmer who had served several times as
Groton town selectman, but even the daughters of respectable families were
expected by their mid-teens to work as servants in neighboring homes, as
had been the case with Elizabeth before she moved in with the Willard
family. In late 1671, Knapp began to have fits, barking like a dog and
speaking rudely in a gruff voice to the minister. The local physician diag-
nosed the illness as the effect of “foulness of the stomach and corruptions of
her blood, occasioning fumes in her brain and strange fantasies,” but when
he could not effectively treat it, he declared it “diabolical” and left further
remedies to Willard and other local ministers.57
Samuel Willard, known for his sermons on damnation, hoped to draw
lessons from Knapp’s affliction, and in those lessons, we can see first-hand
how the ministry interpreted the supposed appearance of witches in their
midst, and how they explained their presence to the people. Willard’s first
effort was a fast-day sermon, in which he sought to instruct the people of
Groton on the spiritual significance of what had happened to Knapp. In that
sermon, which was published for wider circulation in 1673 in Useful
Instructions for a Professing People in Times of Great Security and Degen-
eracy, he urged the townspeople to respond to the event as “an awakening
word of counsel,” whereby they might become a “Beacon upon a Hill by
this Providence, and let those hear what hath been done among us, hear also
of the good effects and reformation it hath wrought among us.” They were
to take heed from it and engage in self-examination, whereby they should
consider “what sins … have given Satan so much footing in this poor place.”
Willard admonished his flock not to focus on witchcraft, or the maleficia
involved, which must certainly have been their first concern, but rather to
consider of what sins they and their neighbors might have been guilty,
thereby incurring God’s wrath in the form of witchcraft. “Remember,” he
continued, “that God sits and rules over men and devils.”58
Willard described Knapp as carrying herself “in a strange and unwonted
manner.” Sometimes she would give sudden shrieks, and if he inquired as to
the reason, “she would always put it off with some excuse and then would
burst forth into immoderate and extravagant laughter, in such wise, as
sometimes she fell onto the ground with it.”59
Knapp claimed she was being afflicted by a neighbor, but upon question-
ing the accused Willard found the neighbor innocent and took no action, a
position he consistently took in the case, refusing to name others. One eve-
ning when Willard was away, Knapp, who was sitting by the fire, suddenly
cried out, “Oh my legs!” and wrapped her arms around them. She cried,
“Oh my breast!” and, according to Willard, “removed her hands thither;
and forthwith [exclaimed], oh I am strangled, and put her hands on her
throat,” complaining that she could not breathe. The next day, Knapp
sometimes wept, sometimes laughed, and at other times made “foolish and
apish gestures.” At one point, she shrieked that she had seen two persons in
the cellar, though they could not be seen by others, and she threw herself to
the floor and threatened to fling herself into the fire, only to be restrained by
those in attendance. And so it continued, for several days.60
Knapp resisted ministerial counsel, Willard reported, but finally confessed
that the Devil had often appeared to her, presented her with a covenant, and
offered to her as an inducement to enter into the covenant with him such
things as money, silks, fine clothes, and ease from her labor. The Devil’s
first visit had been three years before, following her expression of discontent
with her life, and for a while his visits had been infrequent, but as of late
they were more constant. He had presented her with “a book written with
the blood of covenants made by others” and tempted her to murder her
parents, neighbors, Willard’s children, and even Willard himself. But Knapp
insisted that she had not succumbed to the Devil’s entreaties, something she
occasionally contradicted, at one point confessing that the Devil had entered
her and “been in her ever since.”61
Willard would not pass final judgment on the source of Knapp’s fits,
finding the case “unanswerable” due to Knapp’s contradictory declarations.
But his account suggests that he believed her possessed, not afflicted, thereby
involving no others. Thus, he concluded as follows: First, the extreme
nature of Knapp’s fits evidenced that they were real. Second, her fits did not
mimic, and therefore she did not seem to be acting out, possession. Third,
despite the severity of her fits, she gained rather than lost weight, and when
not afflicted retained her natural strength. Fourth, the functions of her
mouth as well as what she had to say appeared to be beyond any of her
control; her throat often swelled to the size of a fist, whereupon she occa-
sionally produced at best guttural sounds, at worst reviling terms that he
had never heard her utter at any other time, and therefore seemed attribu-
table only to the Devil. And fifth, she was therefore to be pitied. “I desire
that all that heare of her would compassionate her forlorn state,” he wrote.
“She is (I question not) a subject of hope, and therefore all meanes ought to
bee used for her recoverey. Shee is a monument of divine severity, and the
Lord grant that all that see or heare, may feare and tremble.”62
Elizabeth Knapp’s possession ended almost as abruptly as it began. In the
fall of 1674, she married and moved to Groton, where she lived a very
ordinary and uneventful life. Her case, however, likely remained fixed in the
memories of those involved in, or witnessed, the events of 1692.63
Cotton Mather’s description of the Goodwin children’s affliction
appeared in 1688, only four years before events in Salem. It presented a case
more clearly of affliction than of possession, and therefore it was even more
influential than that of Elizabeth Knapp on what followed in 1692. As the
Reverend John Hale, who was among the first to observe the young girls of
Salem, wrote: They were “in all things as bad as John Goodwin’s children
in Boston in the year 1689. So that he that would read Mr. Mather’s
book … may read part of what these children and afterward sundry grown
persons suffered by the hand of Satan, at Salem village and parts adja-
cent.”64 Several decades later, historian Thomas Hutchinson would observe
that the conformity between the two was “so exact, as to leave no room to
doubt the stories had been read by the New England [Salem] persons them-
selves, or had been told to them by others who had read them.”65 Instead of
raising suspicion, however, the conformity only confirmed the reality of
both episodes.
The case against Mary Glover began in 1688 in Boston, when four of
John Goodwin’s children – ages thirteen, eleven, seven, and five – began to
display symptoms of diabolical affliction. Mather and other ministers were
called in to pray for the children; he stayed to record his observations, much
as had Samuel Willard, for whatever lessons it might provide the people of
New England.66
The case followed the classic pattern of witchcraft charges in seventeenth-
century New England. Martha, a thirteen-year-old child, accused the woman
who did the family’s laundry of stealing linens from them. Mary Glover, the
mother of the laundress, responded to Martha with “harsh language,”
whereupon Martha’s affliction began. When no physical cause or medical
remedy could be found, Mary Glover and her daughter were arrested, but
only Mary was put on trial.67
Mary Glover, who was Catholic and knew little English, spoke Gaelic at
her trial, leading Mather to comment that it was the result of a charm upon
her. The evidence used against her included testimony that six years before
the Goodwin children became ill, she had bewitched a woman to death.
Before she died, that woman told another person by the name of Hughes
that Glover was to blame. When Hughes prepared to offer this in testimony
at Glover’s trial, her son was stricken, and he claimed to have seen Glover’s
specter. In the end, Mary Glover confessed to practicing image magic – the
use of poppets – and she was executed on November 16, 1688.68
A number of points in Cotton Mather’s report are helpful for our better
understanding not only of the Goodwin case but of all cases in seventeenth-
century New England, including Salem. To begin with, reflecting the
widespread belief in witchcraft, Mather reported that when it became
known that the Goodwin children were stricken, Goodwin’s neighbors
urged him to use counter-magic, a suggestion Mather rejected. Second,
Mather pointed out that the fits of the children continued even after Glover
was executed. This might have led Mather and others to either continue the
search for additional witches or revise their diagnosis from affliction to
possession. Neither, however, occurred, although Mather at least considered
the latter.69
Upon Glover’s execution, Mather, observing that Martha Goodwin was
“growing very far towards possession,” took Goodwin into his home to
heal her spiritually. When Martha reported that there were three other
women witches in Boston besides Glover, he did not act, but rather kept
the names to himself. Mather never abandoned the diagnosis of witchcraft,
or affliction, and his belief in Glover’s guilt, but his caution is notable,
perhaps forestalling what might have become the Boston witch-hunt.
Nevertheless, the case only served to confirm what he already believed
concerning the reality of witches. Upon completing his observation of
Martha Goodwin, he resolved “after this, never to use but just one grain of
patience with any man that shall go to impose upon me a denial of devils
or witches.”70
Mather described John Goodwin as “sober and pious,” and he con-
cluded that the children were suffering from the effects of “stupendous
witchcraft.” He admitted that the children, as other children, had been
tempted by the “temptations of idleness,” but that there was no reason
to believe that in this matter, they “dissembled” rather than being genu-
inely afflicted. Mary Glover, in contrast, according to Mather, was “an
ignorant and a scandalous woman … whose husband before he died, had
sometimes complained … that she was undoubtedly a witch,” and who
had long been a feared presence in the neighborhood. She had reacted to
Martha Goodwin with the vilest of retorts and the result was “very
grievous”:
Sometimes they [the children] would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and

sometimes blind, and often all this at once. One while their tongues
would be drawn down their throats; another while they would be
pulled out upon their chins, to a prodigious length. They would have
their mouths opened unto such a wideness, that their jaws went out of
joint. … They would make most piteous outcries, that they were cut
with knives, and struck with blows that they could not bear. Their
necks would be broken, so that their neck bone would seem dissolved
unto them that felt after it … their heads would be twisted almost
round; and … they would roar exceedingly.71
Elsewhere, Mather wrote that when he prayed before them the children
shrieked “they say we must not listen,” and that upon occasion they had
tried to throw themselves into the fireplace. He noted that it had been
reported that upon occasion the children had flown “like geese,” with
“incredible swiftness … having but just their toes now and then upon the
ground, and their arms waved like the wings of a bird,” in one instance,
about twenty feet without touching the floor. He reported that at mealtime
they occasionally could not eat, but that usually they did, and, like Elizabeth
Knapp, by evening their labors ceased and they slept all night “for the most
part indifferently well.”72
Mather reported that although John Goodwin accused Mary Glover, he
“had no proof that could have done her any hurt.” When summoned for
questioning by the magistrates, however, Glover “gave such a wretched
account of herself” that they saw cause to commit her. She did not deny she
had “enchanted” the children, and when asked if she believed there was a
God, Mather wrote, “her answer was too blasphemous and horrible for my
pen to mention.” On one occasion, when asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer in
English, she made “nonsense” of it, even with prompting. At another time,
she did recite it in Latin “very readily,” but “there was one clause or two
always too hard for her, whereon she said she could not repeat it, if she
might have all the world.”73
And, finally, Mary Glover confessed. When presented with the poppets
found in her home, Mather reported, she admitted using them and demon-
strated how she could afflict the children with them. She admitted that the
Devil was her prince, but that “because he had served her so basely and
falsely, she had confessed all.” When six doctors examined her and declared
her compos mentis, she was sentenced to death.74
Mather visited Glover in jail as she awaited execution. She never denied
her guilt, but she confessed little about the circumstances of her meetings
with the Devil, except that she had four confederates. When she went to her
execution, Glover said that, as there were others, the children would not be
relieved by her death, “and it came to pass accordingly,” Mather wrote,
“that the three children continued in their furnace as before, and it grew
seven times hotter than it was.” Suspicion shifted to another woman in the
neighborhood, but the new suspect died before she could be brought to trial.
Almost immediately, the children showed signs of improvement, and, by
spring, the fires of which Mather spoke cooled.75
The Pattern of Witch-Hunt Activity in Seventeenth-Century
New England
As we have seen, historians of the Great European Witch-Hunt have found a
strong correlation between periods of substantial economic, political, social,
and religious turmoil and significant increases in witch-hunt activity. They
have found it to be true in New England as well, with two important qua-
lifications. First, periods of increased witch-hunt activity followed but did not
occur simultaneously with times of calamity. It is as if epidemics, hurricanes,
crop failures, infestations, fires, and various other reversals channeled New
Englanders’ energies toward overcoming those obstacles at the same time that
they built up resentment toward those they suspected of being responsible for
their problems, but that their resentment could only be released when those
obstacles had been overcome.76
The pattern began with the first significant period of witch-hunt
activity in the late 1640s and early 1650s, and it continued through the
end of the century. The second important qualification, however, is that
in the nearly three decades after 1663, while the pattern of reversals
continued, there was nevertheless an overall decline in the number of
witchcraft prosecutions. In fact, between the Hartford witch-hunt and
the outbreak of hostilities in Salem, the number of prosecutions fell from
nineteen during the 1660s to six during the 1670s and eight during the
1680s. Only four of those prosecuted were convicted and only one was
executed.77 It was as if New England was experiencing the lull before the
storm. And it was during that lull that New England, especially Massachusetts,
faced its greatest reversals of fortune, building up unprecedented levels of
frustration, anxiety, and resentment.
Focusing on Massachusetts, the final period of growing anxiety might be
said to have begun in 1662 with the Massachusetts synod’s adoption of the
Half-way Covenant. Upon their arrival in Massachusetts in 1620, Gover-
nor John Winthrop had proclaimed that “we shall be as a city upon a hill,”
a “Bible commonwealth established by a covenant with God to which all
were to subscribe, subject to God’s wrath.” By 1662, in part due to an
influx of new arrivals, but also the coming of age of a new generation
perhaps less committed to the covenant as the first, those admitted to
church membership having demonstrated their special relationship with
God was in decline. In an attempt to stem the tide of declining member-
ship, the Massachusetts ministers authorized churches to baptize and
thereby admit to partial membership the children of “half-way” members.
“Half-way” members were the children of those who had had the conver-
sion experience necessary for full membership, but who themselves had not
yet qualified. For some, this was merely the recognition of reality, as many
churches were already bending the law on this point, and this was one way
through which to bolster their sagging rosters; for others, it was a sign of
failing faith and loss of mission.78
Two years later, Massachusetts’s long-standing fear of losing its charter and
political, as well as religious, authority were renewed. The Stuart Kings of
England had not hidden their concern with what they saw as Massachusetts’s
abuse of their supposed independence from English law, and periodically they
discussed revoking, or at least rewriting, the colonial charter upon which
Massachusetts stood in its defense of such measures. With the restoration in
1660, that threat seemed, once again, all too real, and much as they feared, in
1664 Charles II appointed a special commission to investigate Massachusetts
and its supposed violations of English law and rules governing the colonies. No
action was taken, but few believed the threat had passed.79
Epidemics of measles, dysentery, influenza, and smallpox struck between
mid-century and 1690. During the period 1677–1678 a smallpox epidemic
took hundreds of lives; in 1690, it claimed over 150 lives. The colony was
struck by a particularly destructive hurricane in 1675, and Boston suffered a
devastating fire in 1676, in which over fifty homes and other structures,
including the North Meeting House and Increase Mather’s parsonage, were
destroyed. Three years later, another fire consumed seventy warehouses and
several ships in Boston’s commercial sector, plus another eighty homes.80
And then there was King Philip’s War, which lasted from 1675 to 1678. In
one year, 1675–1676, in one of the most vicious wars of the century for New
Englanders, Native Americans killed over 600 New Englanders (some esti-
mates list 1,000 deaths), destroyed twelve towns, and looted and burned several
others, at one point striking within ten miles of Boston. New Englanders killed
as many as 3,000 Native Americans, wiped out entire villages, and sold hun-
dreds of captives into slavery in the West Indies. For many Puritan New Eng-
landers, King Philip’s War was a just, if not holy, struggle against the Devil’s
legions, but for some it raised as well the question of why God, who controlled
all things, even the actions of the Devil, had allowed such a thing to happen to
his chosen people.81
King Philip’s War was followed in 1689 by yet another Indian war. Once
again involving New Englanders’ French neighbors, with whom they fought
repeatedly throughout the Colonial Period. It erupted in Maine (then part of
Massachusetts), and although most of the fighting took place at a distance,
it came close enough for the people of Essex County to feel threatened. One
third of those who fought in the 1675–1676 campaign (375 men) were from
Essex County. Fifty-two of them died, and the war wore on for three more
years. By the end of 1689, all of the English settlements north of Falmouth
(today’s Portland), Maine had been abandoned and more than 300 residents
killed or taken prisoner. The war’s devastation was seen as proof of spiri-
tual decline and God’s wrath, in response to which the General Court called
for a plan to support the colony’s moral reform. Historian Mary Beth
Norton points further to the war’s impact on the lives of those living in
Essex County. She has found that no fewer than ten of the afflicted accusers
and confessors of 1692, twenty-three of the accused, and thirteen judges,
jurymen, clergymen, and public officials had ties to the bloody events on the
northern frontier and has argued that the events of 1692 cannot be fully
understood without viewing them in the context of the Indian wars.82
In response to the many afflictions visited upon New Englanders
during the 1680s, Cotton Mather wrote: “The devils are stark mad that
the house of the Lord our God is come unto these remote corners of the
world; and they fume, they fret prodigiously.” But perhaps the most
devastating single blow came in 1684, when the Crown finally revoked
Massachusetts’s charter and two years later included Massachusetts in its
newly conceived political unit of the eight northern colonies known as
the Dominion of New England. For the first time, the colony of Massa-
chusetts had thrust upon it a royally appointed governor, replacing a
locally elected governor, who ruled with a royally appointed council,
rather than a popularly elected bicameral legislature. Revocation of the
old charter called property rights into question, while the Dominion
government assumed the authority to levy taxes without popular consent and
to limit town meetings to only one a year, and then only for the election of local
officials.83
When news of King James II’s downfall in the Glorious Revolution of
1688–1689 reached their ears, New Englanders overthrew the Dominion.
They arrested Governor Edmund Andros and created an interim government
to administer the colony, largely under terms of the old charter. Nothing
permanent could be established, however, until a settlement was reached
with the new royal government of William and Mary. By the winter and
early spring of 1692, when the first signs of the Salem witch-hunt appeared,
no such agreement had yet been reached.84
Finally, if only briefly, as it was addressed as a concept in the previous
chapter on European context, New England on the eve of the Salem witch
trials was experiencing the anxieties of modernization. Seventeenth-century
New England, too, was struggling to deal with the problems that accom-
panied economic change from an agricultural or a traditional to a modern,
or commercial, society. And as Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have
found, “if there was one place in late-seventeenth-century America that was
witnessing in an extremely intense form of the clash between the vanishing
older order and the emerging modern order, it was the two Salems, village
and town.”85
Throughout this period of ill-fortune, Puritan ministers continually com-
mented on and sought to find meaning in what was occurring. They did so
in their sermons, treatises, and other forms of literature, thereby creating
one of the earliest genres of American literature called the jeremiad. This
second generation of New England Puritans found a golden age in the era of
their forefathers – those who had settled New England. And with that
golden age, they associated the ideas of faith and community, from which
they believed the people of New England had strayed, if not fallen, thereby
failing both their forefathers and God, who had chosen them for an “errand
into the wilderness.86
By the 1660s, there was a growing realization that the highest goals of the
founding generation would not be achieved because of the shortcomings of
the second generation. Fast-day and election-day sermons increasingly
focused on New Englanders’ lack of commitment, as compared to their
predecessors, and on the divine punishment that would almost certainly
result if they did not repent and mend their ways. In 1662, the same year the
Half-way Covenant was adopted, Malden minister and poet Michael Wig-
glesworth described God’s reaction to the situation in “God’s Controversy
with New England”:
For think not, O Backsliders, in your heart,

That I shall still your evil manners bear:
Your sins me press as sheaves do load a cart,
And therefore I will plague you for this gear
Except you seriously, and soon, repent,
I’ll not delay your pain and heavy punishment.87
Wigglesworth’s was only one of many public warnings with telling titles
such as New England Pleaded With, The Day of Trouble is Near, and
The Only Sure Way to Prevent Threatened Calamity. In 1668, William
Stoughton, who would serve as chief justice of the court that tried the
accused in 1692, made clear the role of the Devil in Massachusetts’s
declension. In New England’s True Interest: Not to Lie, he asserted that
the people had become spiritually weak, that God had turned his back
on them, and that they had become instruments of Satan. The Massachusetts
General Court responded by repeatedly calling for fast days and publicly
listing the sins of the people, along with a litany of other external
problems.88
In 1679, the General Court called for a synod to consider: “What are the
provoking evils of New England?” The synod met in Boston and lamented
“a great and visible decay of the power of godliness amongst professors in
these churches.” It listed the several misfortunes that had befallen them –
King Philip’s War, a smallpox epidemic, two major fires in Boston, and
deteriorating relations with London – and attributed them to “holy dis-
pleasure.” God’s displeasure, the synod continued, was due to the moral
failings of the second generation, generally described as a decline in god-
liness and in family discipline, and in the unwillingness of the people to
embrace reform. More specifically, the synod cited an increased insubordi-
nation of the lower sorts to their betters, violations of the Sabbath, and
various immoral and unethical acts, as well as a spread of heretics, conten-
tion in congregations, covetousness, and an “inordinate affection” for the
world that included merchants who sold their goods at excessive rates and
laborers who were “unreasonable in their demands.” Citing many of the
same afflictions and causes, in 1690, the General Court issued a call for
universal reformation.89
The frequent gatherings of New England clergymen thereafter routinely
took up similar questions. The Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem village
attended one such gathering in 1690 in Cambridge, at which ministers con-
sidered a question that illustrates the fundamental reason for the periodic
self-flagellation of the Puritans: “What shall be done towards the reforma-
tion of the miscarriages for which New England now suffers by the heavy
judgements of God.”90 If some were disposed to look within their own souls
for the cause of their having lost their way, however, some, like Parris,
would search for that evil in others.
Not coincidentally, it was in the 1680s that the New England clergy
mounted a sustained campaign against magic. Beginning soon after the
reforming synod of 1679, ministers attacked magic from the pulpit and in
print. They berated members of their congregations for using magic and
explained to them in detail why such practices were offensive to God. They
had two fundamental objections to its use. First, they believed that magic
relied on diabolical agency, and those who used magical techniques might
believe that they themselves had somehow harnessed occult forces to bring
about the desired effect, when in fact they had been duped by the Devil.
Second, they insisted that those who used magic disregarded providential
theology, which entrusted all knowledge and power to God. They were
guilty of hubris, or pride, in that they refused to accept their allotted place
in the world and sought to usurp God’s rightful authority.91
People who used magic might not see those dangers, but, wrote the
Reverend John Hale, the Devil was assuredly using such devices to seduce
New Englanders, “that by sorceries, enchantments, divinations and such
like, he may lead them captive at his pleasure.” Moreover, he and others
reminded their congregations that the Devil was not entirely responsible for
their succumbing to his will in those matters. The Devil tempted people
because they were already inclined toward sin and therefore fit candidates
for his services. Those who succumbed to his temptations were impelled to
do so by their own corruption, not by the Devil himself.92
In January 1692, only weeks before the discovery of witchcraft in Salem vil-
lage, Parris addressed the subject of declension in a sermon in which he
explained that Christ exercises “his church in spiritual obedience by manifold
and various troubles, afflictions, and persecutions in this world.” Christ had
placed his church in the world as in a sea, Parris explained, “and [it] suffereth
many storms and tempests to threaten its shipwreck, whilst in the meantime he
himself seems to be fast asleep.” Why would Christ, their mediator with a God
angered by their sins, seemingly abandon his congregations of the elect? He did
so, Parris answered, so as to “humble his church for their sins,” to “make his
church more watchful against sin,” and to “make us more watchful to duty.”93
In February, Parris returned to the subject again and told his congregation
that God had abandoned them because of their “slightings” of Christ: “God
is angry and sending forth destroyers.” That was on February 14, and by
that time the girls of Salem village, even within his own household, had
begun to exhibit the afflictions that would plunge the village into a mael-
strom of accusations. God had indeed begun “sending forth destroyers.”94
If by the closing decades of the seventeenth century, some in New England
were convinced that the unleashing of God’s wrath was at hand, they none-
theless continued to believe that something could still be done to still His hand.
New England Puritans believed that God would not abandon His chosen
people. Therefore, jeremiads commonly ended with a ray of hope. If only they
could realize their errant ways and recommit themselves to God’s original
design, all would be forgiven, and they would once again enter God’s good
graces. That process of recommitment, however, would necessarily involve
ferreting out the evil, not only within their hearts but also within their ranks.95
It is therefore puzzling why the number of prosecutions for witchcraft
declined after 1663. Perhaps colonists lost faith in courts that failed to convict.
The effect of the decline, however, is clear. In the midst of this lull before the
storm, as their problems multiplied, the people of New England found them-
selves unable to protect themselves against the harm they believed was being
done to them by witches, and they increasingly resorted to an alternative
strategy that the clergy condemned as diabolical. As Richard Godbeer has
found, “People turned from the law to informal channels such as counter-magic
because they were not willing to leave a malefactor’s punishment to God [or
the courts]. If another human being was responsible for their condition, they
wanted to know who it was, and they wanted revenge.”96 And although it may
have been delayed during the 1670s and 1680s, in 1692 they had their revenge.
Notes
1 David D. Hall, “Magic and Witchcraft,” in Encyclopedia of the North American
Colonies, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1993), III: 657.
2 John Eccles, France in America, rev. ed. (Markham, Ontario: Fitzhenry and
Whiteside, 1990), 144–145; Hall, “Magic and Witchcraft,” 657–658.
3 Hervé Gagnon, “Witchcraft in Montreal and Quebec during the French Regime,
1600–1760: An Essay on the Survival of French Mentalité in Colonial Canada,”
in Wonders of the Invisible World, 1600–1900, ed. Peter Benes (Boston, MA:
Boston University Scholarly Publications, 1995), 78–79, 83.
4 Iris Gareis, “Merging Magical Traditions: Sorcery and Witchcraft in Spanish and
Portuguese America,” in The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern
Europe and Colonial America, ed. Brian P. Levack (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2013), 412, 426. See also: James H. Sweet, Recreating Africa: Cul-
ture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770 (Chapel
Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Laura de Mello e
Souza, The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross: Witchcraft, Slavery, and
Popular Religion in Colonial Brazil, trans. Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Austin, TX:
University of Texas Press, 2003).
5 Gareis, “Merging Magical Traditions,” 414–415. See also Ruth Behar, “Sex and
Sin, Witchcraft and the Devil in Late Colonial Mexico,” American Ethnologist,
14 (No. 1, 1987): 34–54.
6 Greis, “Merging Magical Traditions,” 426–427; Iris Gareis, “Peru,” in Encyclopedia
of Witchcraft: The Western Tradition, ed. Richard M. Golden, 4 vols. (Santa
Barbara, CA: University of California Press, 2006), III: 894–896. See also: Mary Eli-
zabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz, eds. Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inqui-
sition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,
1991).
7 Gareis, “Merging Magical Traditions,” 427; Souza, The Devil, 130–141, 167–175,
249–255; Iris Gareis, “Brazil,” in Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, I: 143–144.
8 Richard Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” in The Oxford Handbook of
Witchcraft, 393. J. H. Le Froy, Memorial of the Discovery and Early Settlement
of the Bermudas or Somers Island (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1879), II:
601–633; Hall, “Magic and Witchcraft,” 658.
9 Hall, “Magic and Witchcraft,” 658.
10 Francis Neal Parke, “Witchcraft in Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 31
(December 1936): 284, 289–290. Richard Godbeer, among others, has suggested
that the number of those executed in New England may have been thirty-five.
Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” 393. For a listing of witch trials in
seventeenth-century New England, see Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion,
Witches and Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 235–242. For more on witchcraft cases outside New England, see
John Demos, The Enemy Within: 2,000 Years of Witch-Hunting in the Western
World (New York: Viking Press, 2008), 87–92.
11 David S. Lovejoy, “Satanizing the American Indian,” New England Quarterly, 67
(December 1994): 606, 620.
12 Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” 394. See also David D. Hall, Worlds
of Wonder, Days of Judgement: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England
(New York: Penguin, 1989), 71–116.
13 Karen Armstrong, “Introduction” to Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full
Story of the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Doubleday, 1995), ix–x.
(Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 23, 96–97; George
Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1929), 330; John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the
Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), vii.
15 Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England, 362–363.
16 Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” 394–395; Godbeer, The Devil’s
Dominion, 5, 15, 19, 24–25, 55–84; Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 5–7. Richard
Weisman has offered a counterpoint to Godbeer, arguing that magical and
religious beliefs were “competing cosmologies,” rather than syncretic. See
Richard Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in Seventeenth-Century
Massachusetts (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 54–66.
17 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 6; W. R. Jones, “‘Hill-Diggers’ and ‘Hell-Rai-
sers’: Treasure Hunting and the Supernatural in Old and New England,” in
Wonders of the Invisible World: 1600–1900, ed. Peter Benes (Boston, MA: Boston
University Scholarly Publications, 1995), 107–108.
18 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 311–312; David D. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in
Seventeenth-Century New England: A Documentary History, 1638–1692 (Boston,
MA: Northeastern University Press, 1991), 9; Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and
Religion, 53; Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 18.
19 Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American
Experience (New York Oxford University Press, 2015), 5; Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting
in Seventeenth-Century New England, 5; Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,”
398–400; Demos, Entertaining Satan, 275–312.
20 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 13, 279, 298; See Keith Thomas, Religion and the
Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971); and Alan Macfarlane,
Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (New York: Harper and Row, 1970).
21 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 298–299, 311–312; Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor
and Stuart England, 197; Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 80–88.
22 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 84–86.
23 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 21, 68; Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seven-
teenth-Century New England, 6; Demos, Entertaining Satan, 60–61; Baker, A
Storm of Witchcraft, 5.
24 Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 108–110); Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in
the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1987), 165.
25 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 66–68, 72–73.
26 Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, 217. On the complexities of the
laws governing property ownership and inheritance by women, see: Marylin
Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill, NC:
The University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
28 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 77; Jane Kamensky, “Words, Witches, and Woman
Trouble: Witchcraft, Disorderly Speech, and Gender Boundaries in Puritan New
England,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 128 (October 1992): 286–307.
29 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 93–94; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 128–129.
30 Reis, Damned Women, 12–54; Demos, Entertaining Satan, 97, 154.
32 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 157–165, 168; Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a
Woman, 222–251; Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 85–121.
33 Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 44–47.
34 Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 44–47, 50–51.
36 Godbeer, “Witchcraft in British America,” 400.
37 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 11; Demos,
Entertaining Satan, 10; Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 13; Godbeer,
The Devil’s Dominion, 158.
38 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 11; Weisman,
Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 15; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 5.
39 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 10–11; Demos,
Entertaining Satan, 297; Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 98, 103,
109–110. See also: Richard Godbeer, Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of
1692 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
41 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 153–178. Godbeer adds that if the four individuals
who confessed are discounted, the conviction rate falls to 19.7%. Godbeer,
“Witchcraft in British America,” 401–402. See also: Demos, Entertaining Satan, 11.
42 Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion, 18.
43 John Demos has calculated the annual rate of indictments and executions per
100,000 people in New England and England at 6.69 and 1.03, versus.26 and.13,
respectively. Demos, Entertaining Satan, 12.
44 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 19–20.
45 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 21.
49 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 95; Charles
Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), I: 62.
50 Demos, Entertaining Satan, chap. 2; Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-
Century New England, 213.
52 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 30–60; Demos,
Entertaining Satan, 280–290.
56 John Jr. was the son of the previously mentioned Massachusetts Governor John
Winthrop. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 147–148.
Entertaining Satan, 99, 106.
58 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 196–198. Samuel
Willard, Useful Instructions for a Professing People in Times of Great Security
and Degeneracy (Cambridge, MA: Samuel Green, 1673).
Entertaining Satan, 100–101.
60 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 198–199;
Demos, Entertaining Satan, 101–103.
Entertaining Satan, 103.
Demos, Entertaining Satan, 101–105.
63 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 114; Demos provides a detailed account of the Knapp case
on pages 99–123. For Willard’s account of the case, as recorded by Increase Mather,
see: Increase Mather, Illustrious Providences (Boston, MA: Samuel Geeen, 1684).
64 John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), in George
Lincoln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 413–414.
65 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts
Bay (1764), ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936), II: 17–18.
68 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 265–266, 271.
69 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England, 266, 269.
Entertaining Satan, 171–175; Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton
Mather (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 86–87.
72 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 7; Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century
New England, 268–269.
73 Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century, 270–271.
Entertaining Satan, 8.
Demos, Entertaining Satan, 7–9. For more on the Goodwin children/Mary Glover
case, see Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and
Possession (Boston, MA: Richard Pierce, 1689).
76 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 373, 376.
77 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 177.
78 For more on the challenges Massachusetts faced leading up to the witch trials of
1692, see: Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, ch. 2. On the Half-way Covenant, see:
Robert G. Pope, The Half-way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New
England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). See also: David Konig,
Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629–1692 (Chapel Hill,
NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 162–164, 169–170, 178–180;
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, MA:
Belknap Press, 1953), 93–106; and Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts:
Rereading American Puritanism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994),
184–188. For a copy of John Winthrop’s, A Model of Christian Charity (1630), see
www.winthropsociety.com.
79 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 383.
81 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 144; see Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America:
Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975); Douglas E. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New
England in King Philip’s War (New York: W. W. Norton, 1959); James Drake,
King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675–1676 (Amherst, MA: Uni-
versity of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 2–6, 168–169; Kyle Zelner, A Rabble in
Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen During King Philip’s War (New
York: New York University Press, 2009), 17, 201–204; Richard Gildrie, The
Profane, the Civil and the Godly: The Reformation of Manners in Orthodox
New England (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1994), 19–40.
82 Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 5, 319–320.
83 Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, 88; Demos, Entertaining
Satan, 384; David Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (New York:
Harper and Row, 1972), 122–159.
84 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 185; Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in
America, 122–159.
85 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verba-
tim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of
1692 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), I: 13.
86 John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity” (1630), in Winthrop Papers
(Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929–1944), II: 294.
87 Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, eds., The Puritans in America, A Narrative
Anthology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 233–234.
88 William Stoughton, New England’s True Interest: Not to Lie (Cambridge, MA:
S. G. and M. J., 1670), 34, 40; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 49–50. For addi-
tional titles and information, see Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul,
Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986), and Perry Miller, The New England Mind, From Colony
to Province (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953).
89 Miller, The New England Mind, 33–37; Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 75;
Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 60–61. On the General Court’s Oder, see: Robert
Moody and Richard Simmons, eds. The Glorious Revolution (Boston, MA:
Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1988), 218–221.
91 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 64, 73.
93 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 144–145.
94 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 145.
95 See Sacvan Bercovitch, The American Jeremiad (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1978).
3 “The Evil Hand” Is upon Them
Numerous attempts have been made to explain why the witch-hunt of

1692 began in Salem village and not elsewhere in New England. Histor-
ians of witch-hunts tend to focus on extraordinary strains within com-
munities with which they were unable to cope, and to be sure, many
New England communities had their fair share of strains. Several suffered
from the economic, social, political, and religious dislocations of the
early modern period. But second to none, Salem village fell victim to
warring factions, misguided leadership, and geographical limitations that
precipitated the events of 1692.
As Emerson Baker has aptly put it, what happened in Salem village was
“a perfect storm, a unique convergence of conditions and events that pro-
duced what was by far the largest and most lethal witchcraft episode in
American history.” The accusations brought against those accused of
witchcraft reveal a wide range of factors, some predictable, others not. The
accused tended to fall into the same categories as those charged in New
England throughout the seventeenth century. But as to why Salem, Baker
has found that “people were angry and afraid – about the declining spiritual
state of Massachusetts Bay, about religious tensions, about political and
social divisions, and about the failing war efforts on the northern frontier.
Those accused of witchcraft were perceived as a threat, directly or indir-
ectly, or as somehow related to a threat to the spiritual, political, or military
stability and well-being of the community or the colony.” To explain this,
we begin with a look at Salem’s past.1
A Glimpse at Salem’s Past

In 1692, Salem village, now Danvers, was in many ways a typical Massa-
chusetts settlement. With a population of about 600, it remained part of
Salem town, but it had already earned the reputation of being one of New
England’s most contentious communities. As shown by Paul Boyer and Stephen
Nissenbaum, these tensions made Salem village particularly vulnerable to a
witchcraft crisis, and when accusations of witchcraft were made, they followed
the lines formed by that contentiousness.2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-4
Salem town (ironically taking its name from the Hebrew word for peace),
located on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay, had always looked to the
sea. Settled in 1626 as a fishing station and trading post, it became a prin-
cipal destination for the great Puritan migration of the 1630s, among whom
many became involved in trading networks that exported fur, fish, grain,
and timber to ports in England, Spain, Africa, and the West Indies. As the
town’s population grew, grants of land were made in the interior, including
Salem farms, which was to become Salem village, and a sizable measure of
agrarian prosperity was achieved. But, in general, owners of interior lands
increasingly became either dependent on, or isolated from, the town’s com-
mercial interests. Mixed interests and distance from the town church, chal-
lenged the Puritan ideal of close-knit communities in which people lived,
worked, and prayed together and gave way to the separation of village after
village, in time, but not soon enough, Salem village.3
In the 1650s and 1660s, Salem’s economy shifted from farming to com-
merce. By 1680, the probated estates of the town’s merchants were almost
ten times as valuable as those of its farmers. In the period from 1661 to
1681, the richest 10 percent of Salem’s population, almost exclusively mer-
chants, controlled 62 percent of the town’s wealth, about three times as
much as it had a generation earlier. And by about the same time, merchants
gained control of town politics and church affairs, consistently winning a
majority of the town’s selectmen posts and seats in the General Court (the
colonial legislature), as well as a majority on the town’s church committee.
Prior to 1665, for example, twice as many farmers as merchants were elected
town selectmen; from 1665 to 1700, merchant selectmen outnumbered
farmers six to one.4
Since its founding, four other areas, originally part of Salem – Wenham,
Manchester, Marblehead, and Beverly – had been granted separate incor-
poration. Salem village had not, despite the support of what would become
the village’s two warring factions. Salem town likely feared the continued
loss of tax revenue from separations. In 1670, Salem village petitioned for,
and in 1672 was granted, permission to call its own minister, thus sparing
villagers the as much as ten-mile trek to the town meetinghouse on the
Sabbath, but that was granted only after repeated petitioning, and then with
limitations. In their ground-breaking book, Salem Possessed, Paul Boyer and
Stephen Nissenbaum persuasively argued that such limitations on village
government and church memberships played a major role in the outbreak of
witchcraft accusations in 1692.5
Salem town allowed villagers to collect a church tax to construct a meet-
inghouse of their own and to hire a minister. It did not authorize them,
however, to establish an entirely separate congregation; the minister of the
village church could not distribute communion, baptize believers, or dis-
cipline its members, and those who sought full church membership had to
be granted membership in the town church. Otherwise, villagers continued
to pay all other town taxes; to have their constables and representatives to
“The Evil Hand” Is upon Them 63
the General Court chosen by all town residents; and to have the town
selectmen continue to set the prices at which their farm products could be
sold and to determine the location of new roads and the distribution of yet
undistributed lands.6
Acting on what limited autonomy they had been granted, Salem village
residents met on November 11, 1672, to elect a committee to plan the con-
struction of their new church and to hire their first minister. Accomplishing
both, however, did little to ease strained relations between the village and
Salem town. Moreover, it exacerbated a growing rift within the village itself,
between those who sought further independence from the town and those
who opposed it. The establishment of a fully covenanted church and
appointment of a like-minded minister became central to that quarrel.
Kinship was a primary determinant of social action in the seventeenth-
century Puritan New England community, so it is not surprising that the
contending Salem village factions were led by two dominant families: the
Porters and the Putnams. The patriarchs of both families had arrived in
Salem in the 1640s, and through marriage, business, and politics gathered
around them an extensive network of family, partners, and allies. The
second generation had grown wealthy, but the Porters – Joseph, Benjamin,
and Israel – who owned land primarily on the east side of the village and
maintained close commercial ties to the town, grew more prosperous. By
1681, the three Putnam brothers – Thomas Sr., Nathaniel, and John Sr. –
whose lands lay primarily in the north-western part of the village, paid the
largest taxes in the village to the town. Taking into consideration the
entirety of the town, however, the Porters paid even more.7
Further, the Putnams, who relied almost exclusively on farming, faced a
less-certain future. Not only did their land lack convenient access to markets
by either land or water, but it was less arable, consisting in large part of
hills and swampy meadows. Moreover, while the overall total of Putnam
lands increased only slightly, it was being divided among a larger number of
households. What was once distributed among three male Putnams, by the
1690s was being divided eleven ways.8
The families’ political fortunes diverged as well. The Porters excelled in
town politics, the Putnams in village affairs. As early as 1646, John Porter
was elected to the first of many terms as a Salem town selectman. In 1668,
he served as deputy to the General Court. In 1661, he became a deacon in
the Salem town church and upon his death in 1676 left it a bequest. The
second generation followed their father’s example, the most prominent
being Israel Porter, who from 1679 through the end of the century served
twelve terms as a town selectman.9
Before 1672, the year the village church was established, the Putnams had
been active in town affairs, even serving in town office. But thereafter, perhaps
at first by choice but then almost certainly because of the rise to power of the
town’s commercial class, they focused almost exclusively on village affairs,
including its church. From 1665 to 1673, for example, Nathaniel and John
Putnam served a total of seven terms as town selectmen; for the next nineteen
years, they served only five terms, and none of their sons took their places.10
The one notable exception to this family pattern was Joseph, the second
son and only child of Thomas Putnam, Sr. by his second wife Mary. Upon
Thomas’s death in 1686, he left to Mary and, upon his maturity, to Joseph,
the larger part of his estate, including the family homestead. Joseph’s step-
siblings were by no means excluded from their father’s will. Thomas Jr.
and Edward were given farms of their own, but they were convinced that
their father had favored the son of his old age and second love. In 1690,
Joseph Putnam, by then the wealthiest of all of the third-generation Put-
nams, married Elizabeth Porter, entering into an alliance with his family’s
competitors to which he remained faithful to the end.11
Between 1672 and 1689, Salem village hired and then hounded out of
office three ministers: James Bayley, George Burroughs, and Deodat
Lawson. Bayley, a young Harvard graduate, came to the pulpit in October
1672. At first, all went well, but by 1679 a significant minority was in open
rebellion. An appeal was made to the Salem town church to help resolve the
conflict, whereupon the Reverend John Higginson concluded that because
Bayley had the support of a majority of his parishioners all members should
submit to him. The opposition did not submit, however, and at a village
church committee meeting on September 11, 1679, the anti-Bayley faction
managed to gather a sufficient number of votes to dismiss him by the end of
the year. Several petitions to the General Court followed, in response to
which the Assistants (members of the upper house) directed the village to
continue to employ Bayley, only to have the Deputies (members of the lower
house) limit the edict to one year, after which the church would be free to
do what it wished.12
In an attempt to alleviate the problem, Bayley wrote a letter to village
residents voicing his concern over the “uncomfortable divisions and conten-
tions” that existed among them. Although no doubt true, his letter only
served to make matters worse. Soon he was charged with encouraging fac-
tions, theological unorthodoxy, and even neglect of family prayers.
Although exonerated by the General Court, Bayley stepped down in 1680,
despairing of any comfortable future among such a divided lot.13
George Burroughs, Salem village’s second minister and another Harvard
graduate, had preached in Falmouth (later Portland), Maine, on Casco Bay,
until the settlement was destroyed by Indians in 1676, and thereafter in Sal-
isbury, Massachusetts. Chosen by a search committee dominated by Bayley
opponents, Burroughs was chosen in 1680. But like his predecessor, the new
minister soon got into trouble with his divided congregation. It began over
salary. From the start, Burroughs had not been fully paid, and when upon
the death of his wife in 1681 he pressed the matter, some rebuked him for it.
By early 1683, the village stopped paying Burroughs. He ceased meeting with
his congregation, accepted an offer to return to the rebuilt community on
Casco Bay, and departed.14
The Salem village committee, elected by village residents to manage the
church tax, appealed to the Essex County Court to order Burroughs to
return to settle his outstanding debts. On May 2, 1683, he returned to face
his creditors, and apparently without the prior knowledge of others, John
Putnam Sr. had Burroughs arrested. When he could pay neither the debt nor
his bail, he was jailed. In 1681, at the time of his wife’s death, and again in
1682, Putnam had extended Burroughs credit, in the first instance to pay
funeral expenses. Both sides agreed that the loan was to be an advance on
Burroughs’s salary, but as his salary was never paid. Neither was Putnam.
The various suits brought against Burroughs were settled out of court, and
he returned to Maine, but the Putnams were not done with him.15
The third minister to answer Salem’s call was Deodat Lawson. Lawson,
English-born and Cambridge-educated, had served as minister to Martha’s
Vineyard before being called to Salem village. Upon his arrival in 1684, a
period of calm descended on Salem village, but in 1686, controversy arose
once again. It began with a renewed effort on the part of some residents to
establish a fully covenanted church in their midst and to ordain Lawson as
their first fully empowered minister. Leading the change were John Putnam
and his nephew Thomas Putnam Jr., both of whom were members of the
village committee. Leading the opposition were Joseph Hutchinson, Jeb
Swinnerton, Joseph Porter, and Porter’s brother-in-law Daniel Andrew.
When the sides could not be reconciled, they agreed to submit the matter to
five Salem town arbitrators: John Hathorne, Bartholomew Gedney, and
William Brown Jr., three prominent merchants, and the Reverends John
Higginson and Nicholas Noyes of the town church.16
Villager Jeremiah Watts described the affair as pitting “brother … against
brother and neighbors against neighbors, all quarreling and smiting one
another,” and accordingly the arbitrators chastised both sides for their
“uncharitable expressions and uncomely reflections tossed to and fro,” and for
their “settled prejudice” and “animosity.” They also advised against a full
covenanting, at least until residents’ spirits had been “better quieted and
composed.” That not being accomplished, in 1688 Deodat Lawson departed.17
Finally, there was Samuel Parris. Parris was born in London in 1653, but
moved with his family to Barbados, where his father became a sugar planter
and merchant. In 1670, he attended Harvard College, but in 1673, upon his
father’s death, he returned to the island, without his degree, as executor of his
father’s estate. He too became a merchant, but after about eight years, during
which his business suffered from a devastating hurricane and declining sugar
prices, Parris sold out and moved to Boston. He tried to compete with the city’s
already established men of commerce, but failing at that he opted for the min-
istry, and in November 1688, he preached for the first time in Salem village.
Shortly thereafter, the village entered into protracted negotiations for his hire.18
Parris so sufficiently impressed the congregation that they voted to accept
him as their minister, but it took months of protracted discussion over
salary to complete the hiring process, as well as to sow the seeds of future
discontent. On June 18, 1689, Parris’s contract was recorded in the Village
Book of Record, but negotiations over compensation continued. In October,
the village committee – consisting of Nathaniel and John Putnam, Jonathan
Walcott and Thomas Flint (both connected to the Putnams by marriage),
and Nathaniel Ingersoll – voted to grant Parris the deed to the village par-
sonage and two acres of land. In 1682, the property had been set aside for
the support of the village’s minister, with the provision that it not be given
to him, but the committee voted to rescind the earlier action. It may have
been legal, but the decision was not universally popular.19
At the same time Salem village was hiring Samuel Parris, Salem town
finally granted the village permission to gather an independent congregation.
Thus, on November 19, 1689, Samuel Parris, age thirty-six, became the vil-
lage’s first independent minister. On the occasion of its first gathering,
twenty-five villagers joined Parris and his wife in signing the church’s cove-
nant. Three members of the village committee that had led the move for full
establishment signed the covenant; none of the four who were opposed
signed. Twelve of the Putnam clan signed the covenant; none of the Porters
signed. The Porters would attend the village church, but they would remain
members of the town meetinghouse.20
In his ordination sermon, the delivery of which he abbreviated because of
the “sharpness” of the weather, the Reverend Parris proclaimed the dawn of
a new era. He acknowledged the disquiet that had plagued the congregation,
but he urged his flock to put behind them all past controversies and indis-
cretions to enter into the covenant of grace and to come under the seal of
the covenant. The burden of leading members toward reconciliation would
be his, he allowed, but if they were to seize the opportunity they must accept
his leadership as a role model and as a judge of men, so as to “make a dif-
ference between the clean and the unclean, so as to labor to cleanse and purge
the one, and confirm and strengthen the other.” They must treat him as an
“ambassador of Christ Jesus” and abandon the “unchristian like behavior”
they had exhibited toward their ministers in the past. In particular, Parris
excused the extremes to which proponents of independence – and his sup-
porters – had gone in the past, by suggesting that their cause was, after all, a
just cause.21
Finally, in 1689, perhaps buoyed by their other successes, a group of
Salem villagers decided to petition the town for independent township
status, which they did in early 1690. The results, however, were disastrous.
In July 1689, just two weeks after Parris’s hiring, John and Nathaniel
Putnam were elected town selectmen. They led the village in their petition,
but the town selectmen rejected it. One week after the election of 1689,
Israel Porter, Daniel Andrew, and Timothy Lindall (related to the Porters by
marriage) had resigned. Following rejection of the Putnams’ petition, how-
ever, each was returned to office, where they were joined in March 1692 by
another Porter kinsman by marriage, Thomas Gardner, and Philip English, a
Porter ally, for a total of five out of seven town selectmen seats!22
Figure 3.1 Photograph of a portrait of Samuel Parris, a central figure in the Salem
witch trials.
© The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo
As a result of the village’s continued quarreling, as well as his unseemly

contractual haggling, Parris’s ministry was in trouble from the start. His
approach to his calling no doubt made matters worse. First of all, with the
aim of building a community of true believers, Parris resisted recent trends
to open church doors to all who could attest to sound character, a policy
that followed upon adoption of the still much maligned Half-way Covenant
of 1662. Under Parris’s leadership, Salem village rejected the covenant and
continued to demand that candidates for church membership demonstrate,
and have witnesses to, a work of “faith and repentance wrought in their
souls,” and that only those children of at least one such parent having
entered into full communion with the church be eligible for baptism. For the
first year, this did not seem to have been a problem. Church membership
doubled, and despite Parris’s strictures on baptism, fifty-one children
received the sacrament.23 But then, it stalled.
Second, Parris espoused the traditional Calvinist doctrine that all men
were evil by nature, but that through Christ’s sacrifice and atonement God
had chosen some for salvation. Through self-scrutiny and with the
confirming judgment of others, the elect could be assured that they had been
chosen by God and could enter into the church of Christ as Parris intended
it to be, namely a body gathered by separating the elect from the rest of
mankind as Christ’s “peculiar flock.” Their task, Parris reminded the elect,
was not only to follow the teachings of Christ, but also to guard the church
against its enemies, those followers of the Devil who existed everywhere and
at all times.24
Parris’s exclusion from the elect those who could not, or would not,
demonstrate their having been chosen by God, and his increasing tendency
to include his enemies among the excluded, raised the ire of many village
residents. In addition to the stall in new signers of the church covenant,
there was an increase in the number of residents who began to absent
themselves from worship, while some of those who attended, Parris com-
plained, sat “as senseless as the seats they sat on,” or as the “dead bodies
they sometimes tread on.” Finally, in September 1690, the village committee
reported that 20 percent of the 1689/1690 church tax remained unpaid four-
teen months after it had been assessed. In April 1691, the figure had
increased to 29 percent.25
During the summer and fall of 1691, as his efforts to continue the
purification of his church failed, Parris’s sermons became more strident.
In his sermon of July 19, he argued that Christ had “purchased victory
and conquest for believers,” furnishing them with the “skill, strength,
courage, weapons, and all military accomplishments for victory” over
sinners. On October 11, he reminded his congregants that by his suffer-
ing and resurrection, Christ had ascended into heaven in triumph,
wherefrom the “most glorious redeemer” offered salvation to those who
embraced his message, warning those who failed to embrace, that they
faced his opening “the earth under thy feet to swallow thee; and to break
the clouds over thy head to consume thee.”26
On October 16, 1691, members of the Porter faction – Joseph Porter,
Joseph Hutchinson, Joseph Putnam, Daniel Andrew, and Francis Nurse –
were elected to a majority of the village committee. Once in office, they
promptly challenged the legality of Parris’s ownership of the parsonage, and
two months later they refused to assess taxes for the payment of Parris’s
1692 salary. Parris was in trouble, and he knew it. He announced from the
pulpit that although through him Christ had “begun a new work” in Salem
village, it was “the main drift of the Devil to pull it all down.”27
It was not a new message for the Reverend Parris; it had evolved over the
past two years in response to the growing challenge to his ministry. As early
as January 1690, he had warned his congregation that although they may
have pretended to be friends, the “rotten-hearted” were neither to be trusted
nor expected to keep their distance. They could infiltrate even innocent
communities, a point he returned to in February when he warned that there
was “great guiltiness upon this account in this poor little village,” and again
in January 1692, when he charged that a “great hatred ariseth even from
28
nearest relations.” In such sermons, Parris exacerbated the growing fear of
one segment of his congregation of “outsiders,” those of Salem town, but he
also emphasized, to an even greater extent by 1692, the threat of internal
subversion posed by villagers who were linked to those outsiders.
Although in retreat, the pro-Parris faction was by no means ready to
accept defeat, and they marshalled their forces for what would prove to be
one last devastating counterattack. In November 1691, the church elders, led
by the Putnams, asked the village committee to levy a tax to pay Parris’s
salary. When the committee took no action, the elders sued the committee in
county court. The committee countered by calling a village meeting on
December 1 to investigate once again the legality of the action of 1689,
whereby the parsonage and land was deeded over to Parris. No record of the
meeting survives. It may never have happened, or if it did, nothing was
resolved and there is no mention of any other village committee meetings
until early March 1692, at which point the witchcraft hysteria had begun.29
By 1692, Salem village had reached the point of institutional, demographic,
and economic polarization. The church served as the locus of one faction, the
village committee served the other. Seventy percent of village church members
supported the Reverend Parris, while only 13 percent opposed him. Of those
who retained their membership in the town or other churches while wor-
shipping in Salem village, only 56 percent supported Parris, almost all of the
rest being listed among the opposition. Of the twelve wealthiest men of Salem
village who made their opinions known, only four, all Putnams, supported
Parris; eight, all Porters, opposed him. In contrast, of forty-six largely middle-
class male residents whose positions were known, thirty-one backed Parris,
while fifteen stood opposed. As Boyer and Nissenbaum have concluded, Par-
ris’s opposition constituted a minority in the village, but they owned as much
property as his more numerous supporters.30
In geographic terms, Parris’s opposition tended to come from those living
on village lands nearest Salem town, especially along Ipswich Road, which
connected the town to Boston. In that area, opponents outnumbered sup-
porters by a ratio of six-to-one. Among residents of the northwestern half of
the village, Parris’s supporters led opponents four-to-one. In between lay an
area in which proponents and opponents were more evenly divided, with an
edge to Parris.31
Under such circumstances, that the witch-hunt of 1692 began at Salem
makes more sense than it does at first glance. Historic frustrations had
been translated into a life-and-death struggle over a way of life. Of the
first four afflicted girls in Salem village, two lived in the Samuel Parris
household and a third was Ann Putnam, daughter of Thomas Putnam
Jr.; three of the afflicted girls who lived in the household of Thomas
Putnam Jr. formally testified against at least twenty-five accused witches;
and those same three girls were backed by adult members of the Putnam
clan, seven of whom testified or signed complaints against thirty-nine of
the accused witches.32
We should recall, however, a point made at the outset: the people of seven-
teenth-century Salem believed in witches. Further, there is no direct evidence by
which we can attribute those charges brought in the Salem witch trials entirely
to factional politics or to a conscious effort on the part of one group to punish
the other for economic and political wrongs. But in the end, even the young
girls could not have been oblivious to the bitterness and resentment that had
pervaded their own household.33 When leaders of the pro-Parris faction,
including Parris himself, resorted to denouncing their opponents as morally
defective individuals – demonizing them, if you will – it was only one small step
further to attribute their behavior to the influence of the Devil.
The First Signs of the Devil

It all began in mid-January 1692, when Betty Parris and Abigail Williams
became “sadly afflicted of they knew not what distempers.” What brought
about their afflictions remains subject to differing interpretations, but one
popular account has held reign over the years. According to this account,
Salem winters were long and the children of the Reverend Samuel Parris’s
household were confined to their house for what must have seemed to them
an eternity. They had little else to occupy their time but their chores and
listening to the slave Tituba reminisce about her Caribbean homeland and
demonstrate the arts of fortune-telling and conjuring that she had brought
from Barbados when Parris migrated to Massachusetts in 1680.34
As the Reverend John Hale of nearby Beverly later reported: “I know one
of the afflicted persons, who (as I was credibly informed) did try with an egg
and glass to find her future husband’s calling, till there came up a coffin,
that is a specter or likeness of a coffin. And she afterward was followed with
diabolical molestation to her death.” Suspending an egg white in water to
divine the future seems harmless enough to us, but at the time it was fraught
with danger for the young and impressionable girls of Salem village. They
had been warned that such dabbling could open their souls to the Devil. So
the story has some appeal. The problem, however, is that other than Hale’s
brief account, there is little evidence to support it. Historians Bernard
Rosenthal and Mary Beth Norton have cast serious doubt on its credibility,
showing, at least, that in reading the entirety of Hale’s passage, it is not
even clear to whom Hale was referring.35
What we are reasonably certain of is that the first to be afflicted were
Betty, Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, and Abigail, perhaps his eleven-year-
old niece and an orphan. Hale, who was among those Parris called in to
observe the girls later recorded what he witnessed:
These children were bitten and pinched by invisible agents, their arms,
necks, and backs turned this way and that way, and returned back
against, so as it was impossible for them to do of themselves, and
beyond the power of any epileptic fits, or natural disease to effect.
Sometimes they were taken dumb, their mouths stopped, their throats
choked, their limbs wracked and tormented so as might move a heart of
stone, to sympathize with them, with bowels of compassion for them.36
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, the circle soon widened to
encompass several other young single women ranging in age from eleven to
twenty. Perhaps the most dangerous of the group was Ann, the twelve-year-
old daughter of Thomas and Ann Putnam Sr. We have already spoken of
Thomas Putnam. Ann Putnam Sr. had come to Salem in 1672 with her
sister Mary, wife of the Reverend James Bayley. Bayley’s tumultuous years
in the pulpit have already been noted; that the tumult took its toll on Mary
Bayley has not. Repeated pregnancies ended in death, and finally, severely
weakened by her misfortunes, Mary died. Ann attributed her sister’s phy-
sical adversities and death to the harassment the Bayleys received at the
hands of their enemies. Moreover, Ann too had lost babies and suffered in
mind and body. Ann Sr. dreamed that her sister, her sister’s children, and
her own deceased offspring stood before her “in their winding-sheets,
piteously stretching out their hands.” They spoke to her, but she could not
make out their words. As one author put it in describing Ann Jr.’s
approach to the parsonage door to join the girls: “Ann had come on a
serious, even a tragic errand.”37
Twelve-year-old Ann was among the first stricken, but soon thereafter the
Putnam household produced three more of the afflicted: Mercy Lewis, a
servant of some seventeen years; seventeen-year-old Mary Walcott, a rela-
tive; and Ann Putnam Sr. In time, the Putnam women formally testified
against at least twenty-five alleged witches, and they were supported in their
testimony by the Putnam men. In all eight members of the Putnam family
were involved in the prosecution of no fewer than forty-six witches!38
As noted in the previous chapter, “little sorceries,” as Cotton Mather
called them, were commonly practiced in seventeenth-century New England,
but they were nevertheless forbidden and increasingly denounced from the
pulpit. Only those in league with the Devil, ministers explained, could suc-
cessfully employ such powers. Not surprisingly, then, if the girls were dab-
bling in “little sorceries,” the pressure may have grown too great for the
youngest of the group, Betty Parris. At some point in January she began to
behave in a manner that deeply disturbed even those well acquainted with
the most devastating maladies of the day. At first, Betty became unchar-
acteristically absentminded and at other times preoccupied, silently staring
into space, when she was supposed to be engaged in prayer. She began to
lapse into periods of weeping, and finally she succumbed to uncontrollable
bouts of incomprehensible babbling, choking, barking like a dog, and wri-
thing in pain as if being physically tormented by some mysterious invisible
being. Abigail soon matched Betty’s signs of affliction.39
Samuel Parris and other adults resorted, alternatively, to words of comfort
and reprimand, but neither served the purpose, and when prayers were offered
Map 3.1 The geography of witchcraft: Salem village, 1692.

Source: Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft by Paul Boyer and Stephen
Nissenbaum, Copyright © 1974 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
the two responded even more violently. Betty sobbed and at one point threw a
Bible across the room; Abigail “covered her ears, stamped her feet, and roared
at the top of her lungs.” Understandably embarrassed as well as concerned,
Parris tried to keep the matter quiet, but to no avail. Soon, people began
coming to the parsonage to see the girls in action, and once word of the
affliction spread, still other girls, whose connection to Tituba was tenuous at
best, also fell victim. Mary Walcott and Susannah Sheldon, the Walcott’s
servant, fell into convulsions, as did Mercy Lewis, the Putnam’s maid, Mary
Warren, servant to John and Elizabeth Proctor, and Sarah Churchill, George
Jacob’s servant.40
Some in the girls’ audience were no doubt merely curious as to the goings-
on, but others were alarmed by what they saw as an evil portent. They no
doubt remembered what had happened only four years earlier in Boston,
when the Goodwin children succumbed to the wiles of Witch Glover.
Parris called in those who might discover the cause of the girls’ afflictions.
He summoned Salem’s own Dr. William Griggs, whose seventeen-year-old
niece Elizabeth Hubbard was among the afflicted, and he confirmed Par-
ris’s worst fears. When he could neither find a natural cause nor prescribe
effective medical treatment, Griggs concluded that they were “under an evil
hand,” a diagnosis with which other area ministers agreed.41 Parris
appealed to area ministers for help, and although it was still mid-winter
and roads and paths were barely passable, they responded. From Salem
town came the Reverend Nicholas Noyes, who was hardly noted for his
kindness to unrepentant sinners, but from Beverly came the more kindly
Reverend John Hale.
In 1648, at age twelve, Hale was present at the execution of convicted witch
Margaret Jones of Charlestown, and he later recalled that he was impressed by
Jones’s protestations of innocence unto death.42 Since then, Hale had been
called out on similarly troublesome missions, and in each case he had resisted
considerable pressure and evidence to conclude that the Devil was responsible.
Two such cases involved women to be charged during the Salem witch trials.
In 1670, Dorothy (also referred to as Dorcas) Hoar of Beverly confessed
to practicing palmistry, only to have Hale send her on her way with a rep-
rimand. Eight years later, he suspected Hoar and her children were helping
his servant, Margaret Lord, steal from his house. His daughter, Rebecca,
admitted that she knew of the theft but chose not to tell him for fear of
Hoar’s power to “raise the Devil to kill her, or bewitch her.”43 Shortly
thereafter, Rebecca Hale died.
Hale dismissed Lord, but there is no record of his initiating her prosecution.
Hoar was later charged with stealing, and area residents testified to having
witnessed various suspicious occurrences implying witchcraft. Hale recalled his
daughter’s testimony, that Hoar had shown Rebecca a book by which she
could foresee what Rebecca might tell her father of Hoar’s stealing. Still, Hale
refused to accuse Hoar of witchcraft, and the court found her, her husband,
and her daughters guilty of “entertaining” Margaret Lord, not the Devil, and of
receiving stolen goods for which they were ordered to pay costs.44
In the second case, in 1687, Hale adjudicated a quarrel between Sarah Bishop
and Christian Trask, both of Beverly. Trask accused Sarah and her third hus-
band, Edward Bishop, both of whom were tavern keepers, of encouraging late
night revels that included minors and that disturbed the peace. Five years later,
on May 20, 1692, during the trial of Sarah Bishop, Hale reported that in 1687
Trask had entered the tavern, and finding some at shuffleboard, took the pieces,
threw them into the fire, and reproved Sarah Bishop.45
Soon after, Trask showed remorse for her actions and asked Hale to
inform the Bishops that she wished to become friends with them again.
Before Hale could bring about any reconciliation, however, Trask became
distraught and a month later she was found with her windpipe and jugular
vein severed. A pair of scissors lay nearby. It was officially ruled a suicide,
but some, including Hale, had their doubts. Seven years earlier, Bishop had
been suspected of being a witch, and Hale recalled that Trask had believed
himself bewitched by Bishop. But once again, neither he nor the court was
willing to find Bishop culpable.46
Upon his arrival in Salem village,47 Hale and the other ministers presided
over a day of fast and prayer and took spiritual measures to deal with the
malady. Failing to elicit any positive response, the Massachusetts ministers
also feared “the hand of Satan” was upon the children.
At that point, a diagnosis of possession versus affliction was still possible. The
girls, after all, may have been dabbling with forbidden magic, thereby allowing
the Devil to possess them, and they could not name their afflicters. Possibly
because of Hale’s influence, the ministers initially urged Parris to proceed cau-
tiously, to pray to God, and to await God’s guidance, but the ranks of the
afflicted were growing. Perhaps also wishing to protect the girls’ reputations by
ruling out possession, Parris would not be calmed. He began to demand of the
afflicted the names of their tormentors.48
“Who torments you?” Parris asked each girl, but at first none responded.
He provided the names of old suspects, but still there was no response.
Some of the village women took matters into their own hands, fighting
sorcery with sorcery. On February 25, Mary Sibley, the aunt of one of the
afflicted, Mary Walcott, directed Tituba and John Indian, Tituba’s hus-
band, in the baking of a “witch cake.” Rye meal was mixed with the
afflicted children’s urine, baked, and fed to the family dog. If it exhibited
similar physical manifestations, the girls were indeed afflicted. There is no
record of the results, but when Parris found out about this use of white
magic, he flew into a rage, in response to which Betty uttered the name of
Tituba and fell into a swoon. Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and
Ann Putnam soon joined in the chorus, adding the names of Sarah Good
and Sarah Osburn (also referred to as Osborne).49
With her exotic Caribbean background and supposed knowledge of the
suspect arts, as well as her proximity to the afflicted, it was perhaps inevi-
table that Tituba would be charged. And as previously noted, she may have
entertained the girls with her “little sorceries.” Sarah Good and Sarah
Osburn, however, were also vulnerable. Kai Erikson once described Sarah
Good as “a proper hag of a witch if Salem village had ever seen one,” and if
only by reputation that would seem to have been the case.50
The daughter of a prosperous Wenham inn keeper who drowned himself
in 1672, Sarah Good, who Ann Putnam Jr accused of trying to coerce her
into signing the Devil’s book, was denied her inheritance because of com-
plications following the remarriage and death of her mother. Upon the
death of Sarah’s first husband, a penniless former indentured servant who
left her in considerable debt, she married William Good. When they could
not pay Sarah’s creditors, William went to jail, and they lost their prop-
erty. Now among the landless poor, seen as eccentric and outspoken,
melancholic and distracted, Sarah and her children followed William
throughout the village seeking day labor and begging handouts. Only a few
years before she had been suspected of spreading smallpox throughout the
village.51
Much feared was the prospect that during her regular naps in neighbor-
hood barns, Sarah Good’s pipe would set the hay ablaze. Much resented
was what people saw as her ungrateful response to their charity toward her
or the unintelligible grumbling with which she departed those who turned
her away empty-handed. Unintelligible muttering, however, was one thing;
disorderly female speech, as it was known, was quite another. Disorderly
female speech, or displays of insolence through verbal threats, scolding,
cursing, or slandering, called attention to, and helped condemn, Good, as it
had other women before and after. Such use of language by women both
clashed with the Puritan construct of womanhood and was seen as a serious
threat by a people who believed that words, especially those of someone
trafficking with the Devil, could cause real physical harm.52
Sarah Osburn, who Elizabeth Hubbard accused of sending a wolf to stalk
her, was not as poor as Sarah Good, but she shared in some of her other
liabilities. She was older, at age sixty, and her fortunes had declined in several
ways. A native of Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1662 she had married Robert
Prince, a Salem villager who owned a 150-acre farm next to Captain John
Putnam Sr. Sarah Osburn’s sister had married Putnam, and Sarah’s husband
allied himself with Putnam and the village independence movement as well.53
Soon after Prince died in 1674, Sarah’s reputation suffered when she
invited Alexander Osburn, a younger Irish immigrant whose remaining
indenture she had purchased for fifteen pounds, into her home to care for
her and her property and, it was said, into her bed. Although in time Sarah
married William and they both joined the church, the indiscretion was not
forgotten. Moreover, her sons James and Joseph, from her first marriage,
accused her of remarrying in an attempt to deprive them of their inheri-
tance. In his will, Prince stipulated that his sons were to receive his lands
when they came of age. He named John and Thomas Putnam executors of
his will, and soon they were engaged in a protracted legal dispute with
Alexander and Sarah over their attempts to give Alexander permanent
legal control over Prince’s land.54
Finally, perhaps all of these problems led her to commit another serious
error, which was failing to attend church. At the time of her arrest,
according to her husband and others, she had not been to church for over
three years. She explained that she was ill, and indeed she had often been
bedridden. Her marriage to Alexander Osburn seemed not to have been a
happy one, and she often showed signs of being depressed, if not deranged.
But some no doubt wondered whether she was otherwise occupied, perhaps
worshiping the Devil.55
On February 29 (it was a leap year), Thomas Putnam, Ann’s father, and
Thomas’s brother, Edward Putnam, Joseph Hutchinson, and Thomas Pre-
ston swore formal complaints against Tituba, Good, and Osburn on “sus-
picion of witchcraft … and thereby much injury done,” and arrest warrants
were issued charging them with suspicion of witchcraft committed against
Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubbard.56
The women were taken into custody and held in the nearby Ipswich jail
until a preliminary hearing could determine if the evidence was sufficient to
hold them for an appearance before a grand jury. John Hathorne and
Jonathan Corwin, the town’s assistants or delegates to the colonial legis-
lature’s upper house, were called to preside at that hearing.
As members of the General Court, Hathorne and Corwin were at least
generally familiar with the law, if not formally trained as judges. As we have
already seen, the Bible and British and colonial law were clear on one point:
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Whereas British law was more
detailed, however, colonial statutes were decidedly vague, especially in terms
of evidentiary standards.57 The magistrates no doubt believed that they could
recognize acts of witchcraft when they saw them, but just how would they
define witchcraft as a punishable offense in a court of law? What testimony
would be allowed? What evidence would be required for their ordering the
accused held?
For their guidance the magistrates likely turned to the standard legal texts
available to them, as well as to learned treatises by English divines who
were conversant with the law. During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, English writers produced a considerable body of such literature. The
literature ranged from thinly veiled skepticism, especially as to the Devil’s
ability to physically intervene in human affairs, to those who doubted not
the Devil’s power. Puritans sided with the latter, among whom Joseph
Glanvill and Richard Baxter produced a sufficient number of “relations” of
supernatural incidents they believed, to establish the reality of witchcraft.
Baxter’s The Certainty of the World of Spirits (1691) was particularly useful
on that count, but Glanvill provided the definition of a witch that was
employed by authorities in both England and New England. In his Saddu-
cismus Triumphatus [Sadducism Triumphant] or, Full and Plain Evidence
Concerning Witches and Apparitions: In Two Parts, the First Treating of
Their Possibility (1681), he wrote: “A witch is one who can do or seems to
do strange things, beyond the known power of art and ordinary nature, by
virtue of a confederacy with evil spirits.”58
Two other influential studies of witchcraft as a legal problem were Wil-
liam Perkins’s Discourse on the Damned Art of Witchcraft (1608) and
Richard Bernard’s Guide to Grand-Jury Men (1627). As historian Richard
Godbeer has summarized it, their goal was “to cleanse witch prosecutions of
both pagan and ‘popish’ errors” (e.g., dunking) and “to establish a
straightforward procedure for trying witches that would rely on a few
unexceptionable criteria.” Perkins and Bernard argued that a confession was
the most reliable proof of guilt. If the witch did not confess, however,
“conviction was justifiable only if two or more witnesses testified to having
seen the witch either invoking the Devil or performing deeds that unques-
tionably relied upon diabolical agency.” Further, there had to be at least two
witnesses for each incriminating incident. Circumstantial evidence concern-
ing illness or misfortune in the aftermath of an argument with the accused,
considered maleficia, was welcome, but according to Perkins and Bernard it
did not alone justify conviction.59
The New England magistrates adopted much of what Perkins, Bernard,
and others recommended, but they interpreted and implemented it in their
own way. They welcomed witnesses that could testify to suspect incidents
that implied diabolical agency, not only recently but over time. Especially
plentiful was testimony of willful malevolence on the part of the accused.
People were willing to testify to instances of overt hostility followed by
some unexpected misfortune, including in extreme cases the death of a
family member. Whenever possible, authorities tried to buttress such tes-
timony with multiple witnesses and physical evidence, such as the posses-
sion of poppets (dolls), or testimony as to the accused’s having exhibited
supernatural attributes such as superhuman strength or the ability to move
from one place to another faster than seemed humanly possible. And they
ordered the accused to recite a prayer or passage from Scripture, antici-
pating that if the accused was guilty, he or she would stumble over the
wording.60
The magistrates would bring the afflicted and the accused face-to-face,
believing that if their eyes met and the latter was a witch, the afflicted would
fall into a fit of agony, whereupon they would resort to the touch test. In the
touch test, the afflicted, while suffering an attack, would be allowed to touch
the accused, and, it was believed, if the accused was a witch the malignant
fluid would flow back into the body of the witch. Magistrates ordered
defendants to be stripped and searched for “witches’ teats,” any bodily
excrescence, especially if found around the genitals, whereby witches could
suckle their familiars. And they allowed spectral evidence.61
Spectral evidence involved testimony that physical harm to a person or
property had been committed by the specter of a particular individual.
Spectral evidence had long been admissible in prosecutions for witchcraft in
England, but many authorities remained skeptical. Some believed that the
Devil was not restricted to using only those with whom he had reached an
accord, and that he could assume the shape of an innocent person. For that
reason, most British courts had taken the position that such evidence might
be treated as supportive but not conclusive, and that it was not to be used
exclusively to convict.
By and large, the Salem magistrates and the jury that was dependent on
the magistrates’ interpretation of the law for their deliberations acted in a
manner compatible with accepted legal procedures. Even their encouraging
the accused to confess and name others as accomplices was not uncommon.
That does not seem to have been the case, however, with spectral evidence,
upon which they were heavily reliant. From the records of the hearings, it
appears that the evidence, excluding that based on spectral sightings, was
considerable, but it was largely circumstantial and not sufficient to merit in
most cases the negative findings of the jury.62
Perhaps because they were not conducting formal trials where guilt or
innocence was to be established, but only hearings to determine whether the
accused were to be held for a grand jury, the magistrates did not consider
themselves bound by the limitations jurists had placed on such evidence. They
never admitted to that, of course, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that when the girls told the Salem magistrates that the specters of the three
women “did grievously torment them,” the magistrates believed them, and
there was little the accused could do to defend themselves.63
The Hearings Begin

The preliminary hearings began on Tuesday, March 1. The magistrates
arrived via the road from Salem town, gathering into formation around
them the local constabulary and other prominent personages in a solemn yet
impressive entourage. With “pennants flying and drums athrob,” as one
writer has described it, they arrived at Ingersoll’s ordinary (tavern), where
the court was to meet. Finding the space too small to accommodate the
crowd that had gathered, the magistrates moved the hearing to the nearby
meetinghouse. The Reverend Parris’s chair was turned around, thereby
providing a bar of justice for the prisoners, and the pulpit was moved back,
making room for a large table for the magistrates and their secretary Ezekiel
Cheever, later replaced by Parris. Magistrate Hathorne conducted the hear-
ings, and the defendants were left to defend themselves without benefit of
counsel. In theory, in their search for the truth, the magistrates were to aid
the accused in their defense against the charges.64
The magistrates called Sarah Good, and two constables brought her,
pregnant once again, before the court. Consistent with her reputation, Good
would not be a model prisoner. She was often at odds with her jailers.
Three times while on route between Salem and her Ipswich jail, she had
leaped from her horse attempting to flee, and, reportedly, on one occasion
she had tried to kill herself. When in court, Ezekiel Cheever described her
responses to the magistrates as having been delivered “in a very wicked,
spiteful manner, reflecting and retorting against the authority with base and
abusive words.” Neither was she convincing, it seems, as Cheever also
reported that “many lies she was taken in.”65
Sarah Good ardently, even belligerently, denied having made a “contract
with the Devil” or having “familiarity” with him. She rejected accusations
that she had hurt the children or employed someone else to do it. “I scorn
it,” she replied, but the magistrates persisted. Why had she stopped going to
church? “For want of clothes,” she answered. Hathorne recalled that several
villagers had complained that in the past, following her visits to their homes
seeking handouts and her muttering retreat from them, evil and inexplicable
things had occurred, and he called witnesses to testify that prior to such inci-
dents she had spoken to them “in a very wicked, spiteful manner … with base
and abusive language.” “Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris’s
house?” Hathorne asked, citing one particular instance, but Sarah Good
responded that she had only thanked Parris for what he had given her child.
When Hathorne persisted with the similar testimony of others as to her mut-
tering, she allowed, “If I must tell … it is the commandments.” Later, she said
it was a psalm, but when ordered to repeat one she could only mumble through
a few lines.66
Seeking further proof of her effect on the children, Hathorne ordered
Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubbard to
face Sarah Good, whereupon they were “dreadfully tortured and tormented.”
Hathorne pressed for a confession. Good retained her composure, insisted
that she was innocent, and attempted to shift the blame to the other two
accused women, naming Sarah Osburn in particular. Her efforts were
doomed, however, as her six-year-old daughter Dorcas testified that she had
seen her mother with black and yellow birds that had hurt the girls, and her
husband William admitted that Sarah’s behavior had led even him to believe
that she was, or was likely to become, a witch. On one occasion, he testified,
he had seen a witch’s teat on his wife, “a little below her right shoulder,” but
otherwise he could offer no evidence of Sarah’s having practiced witchcraft.
He simply explained, “She acts badly toward me,” and “I may say with tears
that she is an enemy to all good.”67
The court next called Sarah Osburn, only to have the departing Good cry
out, “It is Gammer Osburn that doth pinch and afflict the children”
(“gammer” being a term commonly applied to elderly women). Osburn,
who probably ought to have been in bed, also arrived on the arms of two
constables, but in her case it was for her physical support. Osburn took a
different approach. She too denied having familiarity with the Devil and
hurting the girls, but instead of presenting an aggressive defense, Osburn
entered a plea of innocence that initially elicited some sympathy.68
Three witnesses testified that earlier that morning Osburn had said that
she was “more like[ly] to be bewitched than that she should be a witch,”
and when Hathorne asked her what she had meant, she told him, in a
rambling and often incoherent manner, of a vision or dream she had had in
her sleep in which a “thing like an Indian, all black which did pinch her on
her neck and pulled her by the back part of her head to the door of the
house.” The “thing” had told her to “go no more to meeting,” but she had
gone the following Sabbath, nonetheless. When Hathorne asked why she
had not gone since to meeting, however, thereby apparently yielding to the
Devil, she responded that she had been ill. Without admitting any guilt for
what had happened, or any collusion with the Devil, Osburn portrayed
herself not as the victimizer but as the victim.69
When the girls responded to her presence in the room, as they had to
Good’s, by falling into fits, Osburn continued to deny that she was the cause.
When Hathorne asked how it had happened that in their moment of torment
she had appeared to the girls, she offered that the Devil must have employed
her likeness without her knowing it. It was perhaps a more sophisticated
challenge to the girls’ spectral evidence than Hathorne expected, at least at the
moment, because he did not seek an explanation.70
Tituba’s defense was different, yet again. She was questioned four times over
four days. When first questioned, Tituba stood firm. She explained that her
former mistress in Barbados had taught her “some means to be used for the
discovery of a witch and for the prevention of being bewitched,” but that she
was not a witch and had not hurt the girls. Although only about twenty-five
years old, Tituba quickly learned, however, no doubt from Parris’s badgering,
to tell her accusers what they wanted to hear and to use the court’s prejudices
to her advantage: “I saw a thing like a man, and told me to serve him.”
According to Robert Calef, a contemporary critic of the trials, when Tituba
later recanted her confession, she explained that Parris had beaten her until she
confessed and named others. Although torture was not allowed under the law,
given her slave status, that is entirely possible. As Elaine Breslaw has pointed
out, it is also the case that the specifics of witchcraft Tituba included in her
confession were English, not Caribbean.71
In confessing, Tituba earned a least a temporary reprieve from her tormen-
tors, but, unwittingly or not, she also took revenge on them by feeding their
fears of a diabolical conspiracy. Indeed, she set an example for about fifty of
the accused who would follow her in that she confessed and named names,
whereupon the no doubt startled afflicted girls fell silent. She testified for three
more days and at times became “very much afflicted” herself. She spoke of
familiars like red cats, one of which had two legs, wings, and a woman’s head,
whereupon Abigail Williams testified that she saw the same creature and that it
turned into the shape of Osburn.72
Sarah Good had a cat, and Tituba reported that she had sent it to harm
Elizabeth Hubbard, one of the afflicted. Tituba spoke of a yellow bird that
she saw nursing between fingers of Sarah Good’s right hand; of a creature
that accompanied Osburn, that walked on two legs but was only two-to-
three-feet high, and that sported a long nose and hair all over; and a black
dog. All of the familiars entreated her with “serve me,” as did a tall man
from Boston with white hair who wore black clothes, proclaimed he was
God, tempted her with pretty things, and announced he would kill the chil-
dren and, if she did not serve him, kill her as well.73
Having established the existence of those who led her into her fallen state,
Tituba explained that she was to serve the tall man by tormenting the chil-
dren. “I would not hurt Betty. I love Betty,” she testified as having protested,
but Good and Osburn had forced her to do it anyway, as they also appro-
priated her spectral shape to pinch Elizabeth Hubbard and to attack Ann
Putnam with a knife. Witnesses confirmed Tituba’s recollections concerning
Ann Putnam, testifying that at about the same time Tituba reported the
incident to have happened, the twelve-year-old had been visited spectrally,
that her visitors had tormented her, and that Ann “did complain of a knife –
that they would have cut her head off with a knife.”74
Tituba explained how she had come to know the Devil. She testified that
in mid-January a man had come to her contending that he was God and
promised that if she would serve him for six years, he would give her “many
fine things,” including “a little bird something like green and white.”
Unconvinced that he was actually God, Tituba resolved to consult the
Reverend Parris, but the man angrily stopped her. To appease him, Tituba
called him God, and he disappeared only to return to the parsonage five
nights later with four other witches. While the unsuspecting Parris sat in
another room, her visitors made Tituba pinch Betty Parris. They told her to
go into the other room, and if Parris were to read to her from the Bible and
to ask her what she recalled, she was to reply that she recalled nothing.75
Tituba had finally succumbed, she told the court, agreeing to serve the
Devil for six years because of his threats, and because he promised her “pretty
things” and a familiar. Under duress, she rode with other witches “upon a
stick or pole” and performed evil deeds. In what would prove to be the most
damaging testimony of all, however, Tituba announced that other witches
were at work in the community. She said there were five other witches active
in Salem village, three besides Good and Osburn – two women and one man
from Boston and unknown to her, who hurt the children. Moreover, she
continued, the tall man had with him a book in which she was induced to
make her mark in her own blood, and in which she saw the names of nine
Figure 3.2 A painting by T. H. Matteson, titled Examination of a Witch, 1855.

© Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
people. Tituba could not read, but when pressed for the names of those
signed in the book, she announced that Good had told her she had signed.
Osburn had not, but, she explained, the Devil had told her, that both Good
and Osburn had signed as had others from Boston and Salem.76
Tituba reported that although she had attended witches’ Sabbaths, she did
not recognize the locations. She did recall, once again, the occasion upon
which the four witches and the previously mentioned diminutive upright
hairy familiar had appeared only to her in the parsonage, prevented her
from hearing the Reverend Parris’s prayers, and convened a meeting. She
added that the tall man, presumed to be the Devil, had warned her that if
she told anyone about him, he would cut off her head.77
Tituba confessed that due to the continuous threats of the Devil, she
relented and tormented the girls. She apologized, and the girls who had
exhibited much distress during her questioning, fell silent. When their suf-
fering returned, however, and Hathorne ordered Tituba to reveal to the
court who was hurting the children, she responded that she saw the shape of
Sarah Good, a spectral sighting with which the girls agreed. When pressed
further she exclaimed, “I am blind now. I cannot see,” perhaps knowing that
continued or second sight was denied those who renounced their calling by
the Devil. Her testimony, nevertheless, continued through March 5, as
depositions were added to the record, from which the court found sufficient
evidence to hold all three women.78 On March 7, they were sent to prison in
Boston, where before she could be brought to trial, on May 10, Sarah
Osburn died, as would the newborn of Sarah Good.
Several depositions taken in Good’s case after the hearing, in preparation for
her trial, added damaging evidence. Sarah and Thomas Gadge, for example,
recalled that subsequent to denying Good entrance to their home and Good’s
muttered response, one of their cows died in a “sudden, terrible, and strange
manner.” William Griggs reported that at his house during the evening after the
first day of examinations, the doctor’s niece, Elizabeth Hubbard, had cried out
that Sarah Good was pinching and pricking her. Samuel Sibley deposed that
upon a later occasion when Hubbard visited him, she had screamed that Good
“with all her naked breast and barefooted and barelegged” was standing on a
table near him. He swung his staff in the direction to which Hubbard pointed,
and, according to Hubbard, he struck the specter. Sibley saw no signs of blood
at the time, but the next morning Constable Joseph Herrick examined Good
and found that one of her arms was bloody. Herrick further reported to the
court that the night before he had placed Good under three guards at his home,
barelegged and barefooted, but that in the morning they reported that she had
been gone much of the night!79
And finally, during the evening of March 1, William Allen and John
Hughes reported that when they were walking through the village, they
heard an unusual noise ahead of them. As they got closer, they spotted a
strange beast but it quickly vanished. So too did three women, flying, who
they took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburn, and Tituba. The following
night, the women visited the men in their bed chambers. Allen had retired
for the night when Good appeared and sat on his foot. She was accom-
panied by an unusual light, and when he tried to kick her, both vanished.
Hughes had also gone to bed, only to awake to a “great light” and “a large
gray cat” at the foot of his bed.80
Testimony presented to a grand jury on May 2, 1692, led to Good’s
indictment. Tituba was indicted on May 9. Both were returned to jail and
placed in irons (witches needed extraordinary manacles), but that did not end
the afflicteds’ suffering. Tituba’s testimony confirmed for many, probably
most, that diabolical things had indeed gone on in their midst. With only a
few variations, it was consistent and lent substance to the girls’ testimony and
visible afflictions. As Emerson Baker has concluded: “Her statements were all
the more believable because she described a textbook example of witchcraft”
well known to Salem inhabitants from recent and widely reported cases, as
well as the writings of well-regarded English authors such as William Perkins
in A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (1608), a copy of which was
given to Samuel Parris on the first day of Tituba’s testimony.81
But the incarceration of the accused, and even a series of fasts conducted by
the Reverend Parris and other area ministers, failed to re-establish calm. The
circle of the afflicted only widened and the net to catch their tormentors was
cast further afield. As Salem minister John Higginson commented later, if the
matter had concluded with the condemnation of the three Salem village
women, it would not have been a markedly different affair from the dozens of
other cases in seventeenth-century New England. To that point, the Reverend
John Hale observed ten years later, it “was small, and looked on … as an
ordinary case which had fallen out before at several times in other places and
would be quickly over.”82 That, however, was not to be the case.
Notes
1 Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American
Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), ch. 5, quote from page 125.
1692 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), I: 5. See also: Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft, ch. 3.
3 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, The Social Origins of
Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 110–123; Richard
Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts, 1626–1683: A Covenant Community (Charlottes-
ville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1975), 119–121.
4 Donald W. Koch, “Income Distribution and Political Structure in Seventeenth-
Century Salem, Massachusetts,” Essex Institute Historical Collections 105
(January 1969): 53–56, 59, 61; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 87.
5 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 87, 110–123. In 2018, William and
Mary Quarterly published a forum “Salem Repossessed.” It included an article
by Boyer and Nissenbaum responding to criticism of their work since their
book’s publication: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, “Salem Possessed in
Retrospect,” William and Mary Quarterly, 65 (July 2008): 503–534. The entire
forum can be found on pages 391–534.
6 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 39, 41–43; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 6; Koch, “Income Distribution,” 30.
7 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 110–111.
10 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 129.
12 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 42, 46–47.
14 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 54–55; Mary Beth Norton, In the
Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: W. W. Norton,
2002), 123–125.
15 Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), I, 258–
259; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 56.
16 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 30–33; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 83.
17 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 30–33; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 83.
18 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 34; Larry Gragg, A Quest for Security: The Life
of Samuel Parris, 1653–1720 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 12–13, 30–35,
46–47; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 84–85.
19 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 35; Gragg, A Quest for Security, 46–50; Baker, A
Storm of Witchcraft, 85–86.
20 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 35; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 62–63;
Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem-Village Witchcraft Paper, 268–269.
21 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 35; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed,
154; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 90–91.
22 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 44, 63, 131.
23 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 36; Gildrie, Salem Massachusetts, 1626–1683,
143–145; Benjamin Ray, “Satan’s War Against the Covenant in Salem Village,
1692,” New England Quarterly, 80 (March 2007): 69–95; Richard Latner, “‘Here
Are No Newters’: Witchcraft and Religious Discord in Salem Village and And-
over,” New England Quarterly, 79 (March 2006): 95–100; Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft, 92, 126.
25 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 37; Gragg, A Quest for Security, 74–76; Boyer
and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 66.
26 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 93–94; Ray, “Satan’s War,” 80.
27 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 65; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 38.
29 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 68, 157–159; Boyer and Nissenbaum,
eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft Papers, 177–278, 350–351, 355–357; Gragg, Quest
for Security, 87–88, 95–96; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 95–96, 323 n67.
30 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 34–36, 81–83.
32 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 15.
33 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I, 7.
34 Much has been written about Tituba’s origins, the most likely account provided
by Elaine Breslaw, who identified her homeland as Guyana before becoming
Parris’s servant in Barbados, perhaps having been captured and transported to
Barbados. Elaine Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Devilish Indians
and Puritan Fantasies (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 3–30.
35 Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York: George Braziller, 1969), 55;
Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 13–14; Bernard Rosenthal, “Tituba Story,”
New England Quarterly, 71 (June 1998):190–203; Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 23.
36 Hale is quoted in George Lincoln Burr, ed, Narratives of the New England
Witchcraft Cases (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 413.
37 Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the
Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 36–38. Although not
used at the time, so as to avoid confusion, Ann Putnam, the daughter, will be
referred to as “Jr.” and her mother as “Sr.”
39 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 39–40.
40 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 40.
42 John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), in George
Lincoln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 408.
University Press, 2014), 300–301.
46 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 300–301.
47 Hale, A Modest Inquiry, 413.
48 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 45, 47–48.
49 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 48; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem
Witchcraft Papers, I: 5.
50 On Tituba, see Elaine G. Breslaw: “The Salem Witch from Barbados: In Search of
Tituba’s Roots,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 128 (October 1992): 217–
238; and Breslaw, Tituba. See also Kai R. Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in
the Sociology of Deviance (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966), 143–144.
51 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 49; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed,
203–204; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 16.
52 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 204; W. Elliot Woodward, ed., Records of
Salem Witchcraft Copied from the Original Documents (1864, reprint, New York:
Da Capo Press, 1969), I: 18–19; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 49. On women and
property ownership, see Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in
Early America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1986).
54 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II, 17–18; Winfield Nevins, Witchcraft in Salem Vil-
lage (Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard, 1892), 66; Sidney Perley, The History of
Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, MA: Sidney Perley, 1924), III: 260; Gragg, The
Salem Witch Crisis, 51.
55 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 51; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II, 19, 22.
56 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 125–126. Those examining the trial records
will note differences in dates in various secondary accounts. This is the result of
the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752. The dates used
herein have not been adjust for the change but rather used as originally recorded
in the records. See also Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 16.
57 Daniel G. Payne, “Defending Against the Indefensible: Spectral Evidence at the
Salem Witchcraft Trials,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 129 (January
1993): 64; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 125–126.
58 George Lyman Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1929), 349; Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion:
Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), 159. Joseph Glanvill, Sadducismus Triumphatus (Sadducism
Triumphant) or, Full and Plain Evidence Concerning Witches and Apparitions
(London: J. Collins and S. Lownds, 1681).
60 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 22.
61 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 36.
62 Payne, “Defending Against the Indefensible,” 64.
63 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 48. For a more detailed discussion of legal issues,
see Peter Charles Hoffer, The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History, (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997).
64 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 54–55; Payne, “Defending Against the
Indefensible,” 63.
65 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 56; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 14; II: 30.
67 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 126–127, 129–130.
69 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 130–133; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 21–22;
Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 57.
71 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 18–20; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 48;
Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 23, 32; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invi-
sible World (1700), in George Lincoln Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft
Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 343; Breslaw, “The
Salem Witch from Barbados,” 238.
72 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128–135; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 25;
Breslaw, Tituba, xxiii, 116–117; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 20.
73 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128–135; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 23–26.
74 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128–135; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 25.
75 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128–135; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The
Salem Witchcraft Papers, III: 753; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 59;
Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 23.
76 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 25; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128–135;
Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 60.
77 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 20; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 61. For a
good summary of Tituba’s testimony, see Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 27–30.
78 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 128, 142; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 19–20.
80 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 141.
81 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 20; Gragg, A Quest for Security, 116–117, 128–129.
82 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 407–409; Hale, A Modest Inquiry, 400; Baker,
A Storm of Witchcraft, 20.
4 “Is Not This a Brand Plucked from
the Burning?”
March 11, 1692, was a day of fasting and prayer, not an inappropriate
response to the turmoil in which Salem village found itself. Once again,
area ministers returned both to assist Parris in this day of divine petition
and to consult with him. It was in their presence that the fourth witch was
named. The charge came from Ann Putnam Jr. and the accused was
Martha Cory, who was the first member in good standing of the village
congregation to be singled out. It was an important point psychologically,
because in striking out against Cory the signal was sent that witchcraft
accusations were no longer to be limited to the powerless, the outcast, and
the already victimized.
The Cases of Martha and Giles Cory and Dorothy Good

Martha Cory made the ideal transitional figure for the accusers. Her claim
to respectability has already been noted, but she had also earned the repu-
tation of being opinionated and outspoken, and several years earlier she had
given birth to an illegitimate mulatto who still lived with Martha and her
second husband Giles. Martha and Giles had become prosperous, and she
was recognized in the community as “a stout professor of the faith.” In
1690, she had been received into the village church, and she had already
become a woman of some consequence therein.1 When the accusations
began, however, she chose the wrong side and made no attempt to hide it.
For many, not to be on the side of the witch-hunters was paramount to
being among the witches.
Being the first of a new breed of suspects – those who had professed their
faith in God and been admitted to the church – Martha Cory received a
greater measure of care than those previously charged. On March 12, the
magistrates sent Edward Putnam, Ann’s uncle, and Ezekiel Cheever, clerk in
the initial hearing, to discuss the charges brought against her. Before they left,
perhaps as a test of Ann Putnam’s reliability, they asked Ann to describe what
Martha’s specter was wearing. Ann, likely sensing a trap and taking a page
from Tituba’s testimony, refused: “I am blind now; I cannot see.”2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-5
88 “Is Not This a Brand Plucked from the Burning?”
When Putnam and Cheever reached Cory’s house, they found her alone in
the kitchen, spinning. She greeted them with a smile, they reported, and
said, “I know what you are come for. You are come to talk with me
about being a witch, but I am none. I cannot help people’s talking of
me.” As noted, Martha was well known for being outspoken and even of
taking the words out of one’s mouth, but this was even more than her
visitors expected. “Did she tell you what clothes I have on?” she con-
tinued, and when the men provided the details of what had transpired,
Martha, they noted, “seemed to smile at it as if she had showed us a
pretty trick.”3
Martha, however, was not in a joking mood. She reminded her visitors
that “she had made a profession of Christ and rejoiced to go and hear the
word of God and the like.” She then let her visitors know that she had had
enough of the loose talk circulating in the village and of the malicious gossip
and scandal mongering. She did not think that there were any witches,
Martha announced, which, although she may not have intended to rule
witches out entirely, was tantamount to blasphemy and heresy. When
Putnam and Cheever reminded her that the magistrates had found sufficient
cause to believe that Tituba, Good, and Osborne might be witches, she
replied, “Well, if they are, I could not blame the Devil for making witches of
them, for they were idle slothful persons and minded nothing that was
good.” She was not of their ilk, she assured them.4
On March 14, Martha Cory was summoned to confront her accuser,
Ann Putnam, in her home. As soon as she stepped into the house, Edward
Putnam reported, Ann fell to the floor in a fit. She complained of being
choked and blinded, her “feet and hands twisted in a most grievous
manner,” and she charged Martha Cory, to her face, with having afflicted
her. Ann reported that she had seen Cory nourishing her familiar, a yellow
bird, between her middle and forefinger. Cory invited Ann to more closely
examine her hand, and even placed a finger in the space where Ann
reported seeing the bird, but her rubbing the spot only caused the child to
go blind and collapse. When she regained her sight, Ann cried out that she
saw Cory turning a spit with a man on it in the fireplace. The Putnams’
maid, Mercy Lewis, seized a stick and tried to strike the apparition, only
to scream “with a grievous pain in her arm” as if herself struck. The Put-
nams ordered Cory to leave, but later that night, Edward Putnam reported,
Lewis was:
drawn toward the fire by unseen hands as she sat in a chair and two
men had hold of it. Yet she and the chair moved toward the fire
though they labored to the contrary. Her feet going foremost and I
seeing it, [I] stepped to her feet and lifted with my strength together
with the other two and all little enough to prevent her from going to
the fire … and this distress held until about eleven of the clock in the
night.
“Is Not This a Brand Plucked from the Burning?” 89
Martha Cory, of course, was blamed for the inexplicable phenomenon.
Elsewhere the same day, Abigail Williams cried out against Martha Cory as
well, and when Ann Putnam’s mother fell victim, Edward Putnam and
Henry Kenney filed a complaint. On March 19, 1692, a warrant was issued
for Cory’s arrest.5
Martha Cory’s arrest warrant was issued on a Saturday, and because it
could not be served on the Sabbath, she would not be taken into custody
until Monday morning. On Sunday, she attended church service as usual.
Deodat Lawson, the former minister of Salem village, was to preach. He had
arrived in Salem the day before and had taken up lodging at Ingersoll’s
ordinary. There he met Mary Walcott, who complained of pain in her arm
and bore teeth marks on her wrist. He proceeded to Samuel Parris’s home,
where he observed Abigail Williams at her best, or worst. She ran about the
house, he later noted, flapping her arms in an attempt to fly, and then she
quite dramatically entered into shadow play. A specter entered the room,
which only Abigail could see, and she gave it a name – Goodwife N[urse].6
“Do you see her?” Williams asked of Lawson. “Why there she stands.”
Williams acted as if she were pushing some invisible object from her, which
was certainly the case, he learned, when she shrieked, “I won’t, I won’t, I
won’t take it. I do not know what book it is. I am sure it is none of God’s
book! It is the Devil’s book, for all I know!” Finally, Williams grew hyster-
ical, Lawson concluded, and ran into the fireplace. She returned with fire-
brands, threw them about the house, and dashed back to the hearth in an
attempt to fly up the chimney before being restrained.7
It can hardly be doubted that Williams’s performance was ingrained in
Lawson’s memory when he climbed into the pulpit the next morning,
March 20, but his trials had not ended. Williams arrived and sat quietly,
but so too did Martha Cory, setting the congregation abuzz both at what
seemed to them to be her temerity and in anticipation of what the con-
frontation between the accused and her accuser would bring. Almost
immediately, Ann Putnam and the other girls responded. Cory’s specter
went about its business pinching and choking the girls, and they shrieked
and wailed.8
At the point at which Lawson was scheduled to deliver his sermon, Abi-
gail Williams shouted, “Now stand up and name your text,” and when he
did, she responded, “It is a long text!” Lawson proceeded, but the pande-
monium caused by the afflicted only grew worse. A middle-aged, married,
Quaker woman, Bethshaa Pope, a recent addition to the ranks of the afflic-
ted, became overcome and yelled, “Now there is enough of that.” “Look
where Goody C[orey] sits on the beam suckling her yellow bird betwixt her
fingers,” Williams shouted, and the entire congregation sat transfixed,
straining unsuccessfully to confirm the sighting. Ann Putnam reported that
the bird had flown to the minister’s hat, which was hanging on a peg in the
pulpit, but in time the adults restored order and Lawson was able to complete
the morning service.9
90
E R TOPSFIELD
OV Map of Salem Village and
A ND
Salem Town, 1692
WENHAM
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SALEM VILLAGE
READING
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Meeting House 1692
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Map based on Sa
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by Charles W. Upham.
Drawing by the author.
Map 4.1 Map based on Salem Village Map 1692 in Salem Witchcraft (1867) by Charles W. Upham.
Drawing by the author.
When the afternoon service began, Martha Cory was once again in
attendance. She had remained above the fray all morning, choosing to ignore
the girls’ actions, though they were aimed at her, and she continued to do so
into the afternoon. She made her purpose in being there clear. “I will open
the eyes of the magistrates and the ministers,” she is said to have explained.
Abigail Williams greeted Lawson’s opening of his afternoon sermon with, “I
know no doctrine you had. If you did name one, I have forgot it,” but
relative calm prevailed, and the service proceeded to its conclusion.10
Cory’s hearing began at about noon on Monday, March 21, to a packed
house; once again, the magistrates were forced to move the hearing from
Ingersoll’s ordinary to the meetinghouse. As were her predecessors, Martha
was escorted into the meetinghouse by two constables. She entered defiantly,
by all reports, and faced her accusers, the ranks of whom had now grown to
include the above-mentioned Pope, Sarah Bibber, and “an ancient woman”
named Goodell, likely Eliza Goodell, the oldest women in Salem village. The
Reverend Nicholas Noyes opened the hearing with a prayer, whereupon
Martha asked permission to pray as well. The magistrates refused, responding
that they were not there to hear her pray but to examine her.11
In response to Hathorne’s usual opening questions, Cory denied being a
witch and hurting the girls, insisting that she was a gospel woman. But rather
than belabor the point, as was his custom, Hathorne promptly raised questions
from Putnam’s and Cheever’s deposition about their visit to Cory’s home. In a
series of questions, he asked how she knew the two men were coming to see her
and that they had asked Ann Putnam to describe her clothes. She answered that
she had heard the children had offered such testimony. When pressed, she
said her husband had told her about the procedure, but Giles denied he had
said any such thing, whereupon Martha finally offered that she understood
such testimony was used in the cases of others and that it would likely be
employed in hers.12
Hathorne referred to depositions wherein Cory was quoted as saying that
the Devil could not “stand” before her, but she denied having said it, where-
upon three or four witnesses insisted that she had. Hathorne asked what she
meant when she said that “the magistrates’ and ministers’ eyes were blinded,”
and that she would open them, whereupon Cory laughed and denied having
said that as well. And finally, referring to Ann Putnam’s testimony, Hathorne
asked her what she was turning on the spit in the fireplace. But Cory denied
turning anything on the spit, much less a man.13
Hathorne turned to the moment at hand and asked Cory why she afflicted
the girls. Martha replied that she did not afflict them. He asked Cory if she
believed the girls were bewitched, to which Cory responded that they may
well have been, but that she had had no part in it. When she said she did not
know that there were any witches in the area, Hathorne asked, if that were
true then who was it that had tormented the girls, to which Martha
answered, “How can I know?” And when Hathorne asked what book she
had presented to Mary Walcott, Cory again denied having done any such
thing, adding that perhaps the Devil had appeared in her shape. Cory con-
tinued to insist that it was impossible for her to afflict the children because
she was a gospel woman, but the girls responded with a chorus of “She’s a
gospel witch” and fell into fits. When Hathorne ordered her to explain their
torment, Cory being the apparent cause, she answered, “If you will all go
hang me, how can I help it?”14
Martha Cory called upon the magistrates not to believe the “distracted
children,” but the girls were not done with her by any means. They mimicked
her every move. When she shifted her feet, so did they. When she bit her lips,
they summoned the magistrates to show how their lips bled. And when Cory,
clearly weary of the affair, leaned against the minister’s seat – the prisoner’s
bar – Pope reacted as if she had excruciating pain in her bowels and threw her
muff and shoe at Cory, the latter hitting Cory in the head. It was at that point
that the Black Man, first described by Tituba as the witches’ ringleader,
reappeared. The girls spotted him whispering in Martha’s ear. They heard the
pounding of a drum in the distance, and when they looked out of the window
they reported seeing several witches assembling for worship outside the
meetinghouse. “Don’t you hear the drumbeat?” one of the girls cried. “Why
don’t you go, gospel witch? Why don’t you go too?”15
The magistrates called Martha Cory’s husband to the stand, but he would
neither confirm Martha’s testimony on Putnam’s and Cheever’s visit, nor
offer effective testimony in her support. Like Martha, Giles Cory, seventy-
two years of age in 1692, was a religious man, having been received into the
Salem town church one year earlier. Unlike Martha, he seemed to have been
caught up in the excitement of the moment and even became a believer in
the witch-hunt. If, at that point, Giles Cory believed his wife was a witch, it
was not clear, but in his attempt to be scrupulously honest in his testimony
he only added to her condemnation. He admitted, for example, that ever
since Martha had removed the saddle from his horse as he was preparing to
attend a session of the hearings, he had been suspicious about her intent. He
reported that during the past week he had found it hard to pray unless
Martha was nearby. Once, in the middle of the night, he had found her
kneeling silently on the hearth, but he could hear nothing nor determine for
sure what it was she was doing. On one occasion, upon fetching an ox, the
animal had lain down and resisted rising, dragging “his hinder parts as if he
had been hip shot.” And, at another time, their cat had suddenly grown ill,
whereupon Martha had encouraged him to put it out of its misery, only to
have it recover.16
The testimony against Martha Cory was impressive by seventeenth-century
standards. It was made worse when she laughed at Hathorne’s questions and
the outbursts of the afflicted, for which Hathorne reprimanded her. “You can’t
prove me a witch,” Martha cried as she was led from the meetinghouse, but
that was not the issue. They had found good reason to try, and as she herself
had observed, “If you will all go hang me, how can I help it?” As the Reverend
Noyes later wrote of the affair: “It was the judgment of all that were present,
they [the girls] were bewitched, and only she, the accused person, said they
were distracted.”17
Martha Cory’s hearing lasted only one day, and in the end, she was
packed off to prison to await trial, but before that would occur she was
joined by her husband. The magistrates issued a warrant for Giles Cory’s
arrest on April 8.18 He had accepted the idea of his wife’s guilt, perhaps out
of his own piety, and he had denounced those of his sons-in-law that
defended Martha. Nevertheless, Giles now found himself standing among
the accused.
Giles Cory had a substantial criminal record, including theft, though largely
of minor items such as food and tobacco, for which he was charged and
found guilty on at least two occasions. Of a more serious nature, John Procter
held Cory responsible for setting fire to his house, but he could never prove it,
and Cory provided evidence that he was at home the night of the fire.19
Cory was well-known for his quick temper. Court records make reference
to his quarrels with neighbors over fences, sawmills, and the like. One fre-
quent antagonist referred to him as “a very quarrelsome and contentious
bad neighbor.” And, not surprisingly, there are reports of Cory’s having
been the victim, and agent, of violence. In 1651, records show that John
Kitchin, seeking revenge for some perceived or real slight, pinched, choked,
and kicked Cory, tossed “stinking water” on him, and threw him out the
door. Cory tried to escape, but Kitchin chased him down, threw him off a
rail fence he had climbed, and beat him “until he was all bloody.” Twenty-
four years later, Cory so badly beat with a stick his servant Jacob Goodale
that Goodale apparently died from the wounds. During the several days the
servant lay dying; however, he refused to contradict Cory’s explanation that
he had fallen. Neither did a neighbor, who had broken up the beating, but
when Goodale died, an inquest was held. Although no evidence was found
to directly link Cory to the beating, he was nevertheless fined for abuse.20
Some of Cory’s neighbors came to believe that he possessed occult
powers. In one quarrel, Robert Moulton testified, Cory had told him that
his “sawmill should saw no more,” and sure enough, shortly thereafter, it
did not. Still, as noted, Cory had recently become a member of the Salem
town church, and the church records attest to a remarkable change in his
behavior. They report that although he had been “a scandalous person,”
God had “awakened him upon repentance,” and he had made a confession
of those evils that had been held against him. Therefore, “he was received
into the church with the consent of the brethren.”21
When he appeared before the Salem magistrates, the circle of accusers
responded to Giles Cory as they had to his wife and others of the accused,
condemning him, one by one. Parris reported, “All the afflicted were
seized … with fits, and troubled with pinches.” The magistrates ordered
Cory’s hands tied, and Hathorne exclaimed, “What! Is it not enough to act
witchcraft at other times, but you must do it now, in the face of authority?”
Still bewildered, all Giles could say was, “I am a poor creature and cannot
help it.” He moved his head, and the girls’ heads and necks were sorely
afflicted. One of his hands was let go, and several reacted in pain. “He drew
in his cheeks, and the cheeks of some of the afflicted were sucked in.”22
Perhaps better sensing his predicament, Cory began to come out of his
bewildered state. The turning point occurred when some of the afflicted
testified that Cory had said that he had seen the Devil in the shape of a
black hog and was afraid. Jolted back to his senses, Cory snapped that he
had never seen such an image and, he added, “I do not know that I ever
spoke that word [afraid] in my life.” Cory was accused of having said that
“he would make away with himself, and charge his death upon his son,” a
statement that must have seemed plausible to those who knew of the con-
troversy he had created within his family over the role he had played in his
wife’s condemnation.23 The magistrates, however, had heard enough. They
ordered him off to prison, setting the stage for perhaps the most bizarre
episode of the Salem witch trials, to which we will return in Chapter 8.
Soon after the magistrates ordered Martha Cory held for trial, they
packed off to prison the youngest of the accused witches of the Salem witch
trials, Dorothy Good, Sarah Good’s daughter. According to Mary Walcott
and Ann Putnam Jr., Dorothy, or at least her specter, had been “running
about the countryside like a little mad dog, biting the girls in return for
what they had done to her mother.” Putnam accused her of biting, pinching,
and choking her in an attempt to get her to sign the Devil’s book. A warrant
was issued for her arrest. At her hearing, whenever Dorothy looked at the
girls, they screamed, accused her of biting them, and displayed teeth marks
on their arms. Otherwise, the hearing was brief, and she was jailed. Two
days later, Hathorne, Corwin, and Salem town minister John Higginson
visited Dorothy Good in prison, where she told them that she had “a little
snake that used to suck on the lowest joint” of her forefinger. She pointed to
the spot and explained that the snake had been given to her by her mother.
The four-year-old did not hang, but following her release several months
later, reports suggest that she was never quite the same again.24
The Case of Rebecca Nurse

If Martha Cory was the first church member in good standing to be accused
of witchcraft, Rebecca Nurse was even more saintly and better placed. She
certainly represented a higher rung on the social ladder, and the greatest
challenge to date to the as-yet-perfect onslaught of the accusers. At seventy-
one years of age, Rebecca was the oldest of the Towne sisters and the
matriarch of the Nurse family. Although she worshipped in the Salem vil-
lage church, she remained a member of the town church, and in the eyes of
many she was the very essence of the Puritan mother – pious and beloved.
Indeed, her family submitted a petition signed by 39 neighbors attesting to
her innocence. That is not to say, however, that she did not have her
weaknesses or her enemies.25
Rebecca was one of eight children of William Towne of Topsfield, who
died in 1672 leaving a small estate. She had married Francis Nurse, who had
risen from an obscure artisan to landed yeoman with the acquisition of a
300-acre farm near Ipswich Road. Not everyone looked with favor upon
such rising above one’s station in the Puritan community, least of all the
Nurses’ neighbor Zerubel Endicott, whose family once owned the 300 acres
on which the Nurses and their four sons and four daughters all married,
resided, and prospered. Few questioned the decent God-fearing character of
the Nurses, but to some their growing prosperity was suspect. A few recalled
that years earlier Rebecca Nurse’s mother had been accused of witchcraft,
although she was never arrested or brought to trial.26
The Nurses did not yet own their property. They were in the process of
buying it from the Reverend James Allen. Allen had gained possession of the
300 acres through his marriage to an Endicott woman, but when his wife
died, rather than return the land to the Endicotts as Jerubel Endicott would
have liked, he sold it to the Nurses. A boundary dispute between the Nurses
and Endicott ensued, as did a brawl over the cutting of wood on overlapping
property. Both conflicts had long been settled but probably not forgotten by
1692, at which point the Nurses had only six years of payments left.27
Beginning half a century earlier and lasting for many years, a boundary
quarrel had ensued between the residents of Salem village and Topsfield,
among whom the Townes were prominent. In response to one of the most
vehement resolutions passed at a meeting of the inhabitants of Salem village in
that affair, Samuel Nurse, Rebecca’s eldest son, and Thomas Preston, her son-
in-law, lodged a formal objection. And on another occasion, Rebecca’s hus-
band, Francis Nurse, Samuel Nurse, Preston, and another son-in-law issued a
protest. Living in Salem but siding with the Topsfield group no doubt created
lasting ill will against the Nurses. That the boundary disputes involved the
Putnams, exacerbated by Francis Nurse’s joining the anti-Parris Salem Village
faction, likely contributed to the charges the Putnams initiated against Rebecca
Nurse, and soon thereafter, her sisters Mary Esty and Sarah Cloyce.28
And, finally, Rebecca Nurse had some personal flaws, most of which were
largely attributable to her age, such as her poor hearing. She often failed to
hear and therefore did not respond to what was said to her by her neigh-
bors. She was known to lose her temper. Witnesses recalled that on one
occasion, when a neighbor’s hogs got free and trampled her flax garden,
Rebecca had lashed out at the neighbors in no uncertain and un-Christian
terms. They also recalled that the neighbor had died shortly thereafter.29
Ann Putnam Sr. was one of the first to name Rebecca Nurse, and there may
have been reasons, if subconscious, why she did so. To begin with, the Nurses
belonged to the party that had opposed the Reverend Bayley, Ann Putnam’s
brother-in-law. Second, Nurse was connected to the protracted boundary dis-
pute between the residents of Topsfield and Salem village, which included
claims made against lands belonging to the Putnam family. Third, during the
1670s, while residing in Salem village, Francis Nurse, Rebecca’s husband, had
been involved in a dispute with Nathaniel Putnam over some mutually bounded
acreage. And fourth, over the years, Francis Nurse had grown closer, politically,
to the Porter faction. The reader will recall that he was one of the four Porterites
to be elected to the village committee in October 1691, at the expense of the
Putnamites, and that the committee had challenged the Putnamites’ decision in
1689 to transfer ownership of the village parsonage to the Reverend Parris.30
On March 23, two days after Martha Cory’s examination, the Reverend
Lawson visited Ann Putnam. She had been severely tormented by appari-
tions, including that of Martha Cory, for several days. On two occasions,
she reported, Cory was accompanied by Rebecca Nurse. The first visit was
brief; during the second, however, Nurse appeared to Putnam early in the
morning, clad only in her shift and nightcap. She brought with her a “little
red book,” which she urged Putnam to sign, threatening to tear her soul out
of her body if she did not. Nurse, Putnam told Lawson, had blasphemed by
denying God and the power of Jesus Christ to save her soul, as well as by
denying several passages from scripture of which Putnam informed her in
order “to repel her hellish temptations.”31
Putnam asked Lawson to pray for her, and he did, but as he began his
prayers Ann suffered a fit. Her husband tried to help her from her bed to
kneel and pray, but “she could not be bended,” and soon she began to
move frantically about the room, arguing with Rebecca Nurse’s specter.
“Goodwife Nurse be gone!” she cried out. “Are you not ashamed, a
woman of your profession, to afflict a poor creature so? What hurt have
I ever done you in my life?” Putnam told Nurse that she was to live only
two more years, Lawson reported, whereupon her soul would become
the Devil’s, for “your name is blotted out of God’s Book, and it shall
never be put in God’s Book, again.” Again Putnam ordered Nurse away,
adding, “I know what you would have [Lawson assumed she meant her
soul] but it is out of your reach; it is clothed with the white robes of
Christ’s righteousness.” And finally, engaging Nurse’s shape in a discus-
sion of scripture, Putnam exclaimed that Nurse could not remain if
Lawson were to recite the third chapter of the Book of Revelation.
Lawson started to read it, and before long, Nurse disappeared, leaving
Ann Putnam in peace.32
On the same date, March 23, Edward and Jonathan Putnam (son of John)
filed complaints with the presiding magistrates, and they ordered Nurse’s
arrest for practicing “certain detestable acts called witchcraft” on Ann
Putnam, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Abigail Williams. Before
taking Nurse into custody, however, the magistrates sent Israel and Elizabeth
Porter to speak to her. Israel Porter we have already met; Elizabeth was John
Hathorne’s sister.33
Nurse had been ill for about a week, the Porters found upon their arrival,
but, in the company of her sister Sarah, Sarah’s husband, Peter Cloyce, and
a friend, Daniel Andrew, all of whom served as witnesses, they were able to
visit Nurse in her bedroom. Unlike Martha Cory, Rebecca Nurse had no
idea why the Porters had come. She smiled, they later reported, and sat up
as best she could. They asked how she was feeling, to which Nurse replied
that “she blessed God” for her illness because “she had more of his pre-
sence” in her sickness than she sometimes had when she was well, “but not
so much as she desired.” She had resolved, Nurse continued, thereafter
“with the apostle [to] press forward to the mark.”34
As one might expect, Nurse inquired about the status of the afflicted vil-
lage children. She expressed her grief for the Parris family, and when told
that the children did not fare any better as of late, Nurse offered that she
“went to God for them.” She also said, however, that she had heard that
some of the accused “were as innocent as she.” The Porters must have been
more than a little startled by Nurse’s comment, but they pushed on. They
told her that, in fact, she had been named, whereupon Nurse replied, “Well,
if it be so, the will of the Lord be done.” She sat silently for a moment, as if
in a trance, and then added, “As to this thing I am as innocent as the child
unborn; but surely, what sin hath God found out in me unrepented of, that
he should lay such an affliction upon me in my old age?”35
Unlike all who had gone before her, when Rebecca Nurse entered the
meetinghouse to meet her judges on March 24, 1692, the response was one
of marked compassion, even among the magistrates who had otherwise
become quite hardened to their deadly serious task. One by one, however,
the girls accused Nurse of having tormented them, and Ann Putnam, the
younger, fell in pain to the floor, crying that Nurse was afflicting her.
Hathorne turned to Nurse and asked what she had to say in response to the
girls’ charges, and she replied, “I can say before my eternal father, I am
innocent, and God will clear my innocency.” Hathorne, perhaps genuinely
impressed, responded, “Here is never a one in the assembly but desires it;
but, if you be guilty, I pray God discover you.”36
Henry Kenney testified that, following a visit by Nurse to his home, he
had been seized “with an amazed condition,” but Nurse refused to take
responsibility. “Would you have me belie myself?” she answered. Hathorne
did not respond. Instead, he read her the most serious charge, that which
had been sworn to by Ann Putnam Sr. Little children in their winding sheets
had been appearing to Ann, calling her aunt and telling her dreadful things,
namely that Rebecca Nurse had caused their death. When asked to respond
to the charge, all Rebecca could say was, “I cannot tell what to think.”37
When other witnesses confirmed that Rebecca had indeed tormented the
accusing girls, Rebecca once again maintained her innocence and explained
that she had not been able to leave her house for the past eight or nine days.
The girls, however, would have none of it. One by one, they had convul-
sions. Above it all the voice of the elder Ann Putnam could be heard. “Did
you not bring the Black Man with you? Did you not bid me tempt God and
die? How often have you eaten and drunk your own damnation?” Bedlam
ensued at the unexpected outburst, and Putnam’s agony was so great that
the magistrates gave her husband permission to take her from the
meetinghouse. Only the near-deaf, and likely confused, Rebecca Nurse failed
to respond, at which point the girls explained that she was being dis-
tracted by the “Black Man,” who was whispering in her ear. When
Hathorne pressed her for an explanation, all Nurse could say was, “Oh,
Lord help me!”38
The girls mimicked Rebecca Nurse’s every movement and gesture, and
they cried out in pain as if she were practicing her art on them in punish-
ment for their actions against her. Hathorne watched closely and noticed
that throughout all of it, Rebecca Nurse, despite her protests and unlike
many of the other women in the meetinghouse, had not cried. Tears, he
recalled, were not possible for a witch. “It is awful for all to see these ago-
nies, and [to see] you an old professor thus charged with the Devil by the
effects of it,” he commented, “and yet to see you stand with dry eyes where
there are so many wet.” “You do not know my heart,” Rebecca responded,
but Hathorne ignored the response and told her that she would do well to
confess if she were guilty and to give glory to God.39
Perhaps because she had expressed earlier such concern for the girls,
Hathorne asked Nurse why she had never visited the afflicted. “Because I
was afraid I should have fits too,” she answered. Did she believe, then, that
they were bewitched? “I do think they are,” she responded. Unlike Martha
Cory, whose response to a similar question suggested that she did not
believe the girls were bewitched or that witches were present in Salem vil-
lage, and even implied that she did not believe in witches, Nurse remained
among the considerable majority of the populace who believed in witches
and the possibility of all three assertions. Nevertheless, she maintained her
innocence, and when Hathorne reminded her that it was her specter that
continued to torment the girls, Nurse could only answer, “I cannot help it.
The Devil may appear in my shape.”40
The magistrates returned Nurse to jail and broke for the day around
noon so Deodat Lawson would be able to use the meetinghouse that
afternoon to deliver the Lecture Day sermon. Lecture Day sermons on
most occasions were well-attended; under the peculiar circumstances of
March 1692, the sermon attracted a capacity crowd, including area min-
isters and, of course, the afflicted girls. The arrest of Martha Cory and
Rebecca Nurse had raised new and serious questions concerning the
trials, which if not resolved could threaten their continuation. Both Cory
and Nurse had asked whether spectral evidence was trustworthy. Both
suggested that the Devil had assumed their shape without their knowl-
edge or permission, and some observers wondered whether it was indeed
possible for the Devil to employ the specters of innocent people. Cory
and Nurse had been professed and respected members of the church, and
some found it difficult to believe that they, who had made a covenant
with God, would, or could, break that covenant and enter into one with
the Devil. It was up to Deodat Lawson to provide answers to their
questions.41
Deodat Lawson’s Lecture Day Sermon
Deodat Lawson’s activities from his arrival in Salem village on March 19
through his tumultuous Sunday sermon to his tempestuous visit with Ann
Putnam, Sr. on Wednesday, March 23, have already been noted. On March
24, Lawson attended the examination of Rebecca Nurse but left one hour
early to complete his Lecture Day sermon. He had seen enough, and he
chose as the title of his sermon, “Christ’s Fidelity the Only Shield Against
Satan’s Malignity.” For his text, he selected Zechariah 3:2: “And the Lord
said unto Satan, the Lord rebuke thee, O Satan. Even the Lord that hath
chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked from the burning?”
Lawson began his sermon by reviewing the well-known story of Satan’s
rebellion and descent from heaven with his “accursed legions.” He reminded
his listeners that, as a result, the Devil was committed to a continued struggle
with “the infinite and eternal God” and was “filled with envy and malice
against all mankind,” God’s creation. The “Grand Enemy of all mankind,” he
explained, is always seeking “to catch, devour, and destroy souls.” To that
end, he employs various tactics, including confusion, in which he surrounds
people in “mists of darkness”; “frightful representations” in people’s imagi-
nations; “violent tortures of the body”; and, in certain cases where he receives
people’s assistance, possession of human souls.42
Lawson pointed to recent adverse developments as God’s righteous
punishment for a people who had forgotten the commitment of their
fathers – the founding fathers of New England – to Christ. “We all, even
the best of us,” Lawson announced, “have by sin a hand and share, in
provoking God, thus to let Satan loose.” In particular, he suggested that God
might have been exercising his “righteous judgment” in sending “this fire of
His holy displeasure” upon them, “to put out some fires of contention” that
had been among them.43
On the one hand, Lawson offered that what had occurred was only the
opening salvo of a prolonged conflict with the Devil for the spiritual allegiance
of New Englanders. He said:
You are therefore to be deeply humbled, and sit in the dust, considering
the signal hand of God in singling out this place, this poor village, for the
first seat of Satan’s tyranny, and to make it (as it were) the rendezvous of
devils where they muster their infernal forces appearing to the afflicted as
coming armed to carry on their malicious designs against the bodies, and
if God in mercy prevent not, against the souls of many in this place.44
On the other hand, Lawson offered comfort and some reassurance to the
congregation. Even in its darkest hour, he explained, God would not aban-
don Salem, one of the Puritan cities in the wilderness, a Jerusalem chosen by
God. Surely, in the end, God would rebuke and destroy their adversaries,
even if they were the legions of the Devil.45
Lawson answered those who questioned the apparent guilt of the visibly
godly, like Cory and Nurse, and in doing so lent support to the use of
spectral evidence. He reminded those present about the nature and super-
human powers of the Devil, who did not have to, but often did, employ
human mediums in his attacks on mankind. He “contracts and indents”
with such persons, Lawson explained, so that they might be “the instru-
ments by whom he may secretly affect and afflict the bodies and minds of
others.” To prevail upon those that make a visible profession to God, he
continued – like Cory and Nurse, although he did not name them – may
be the best, covert way to pursue his diabolical enterprise, and thereby to
more effectively “pervert others to consenting unto his subjection.” In that
manner, as he had in Salem village, the Devil “insinuates into the society of
the adopted children of God,” winning over “the visible subjects of Christ’s
Kingdom,” because “it is certain that he never works more like the Prince of
Darkness than when he looks most like an angel of light.”46
But, Lawson added, in reference to spectral evidence, “so far as we can look
into those hellish mysteries, and guess at the administration of that kingdom of
darkness,” people become subject to the Devil, or become witches, only upon
their swearing allegiance to him, or by “subscribing to a book or articles, etc.”
Then having them “in his subjection, by their consent” – and their no longer
being innocent – the Devil can “use their bodies and minds, shapes and
representations” to his purposes. In sum, the Devil could not assume the
shape of an innocent person.47
At that crucial moment in the Salem witch trials, when serious doubts
existed as to its validity, the highly regarded Deodat Lawson stepped for-
ward to allay fears that the magistrates’ emphasis on spectral evidence had
been misplaced. Further, he made it clear that the people of Salem village
were engaged in no ordinary battle, but in one of cosmic importance. What
had occurred was to serve as a “solemn warning and awakening” to all of
the “direful operations of Satan,” which God had permitted to occur in their
midst. “Awake, awake then,” he beseeched them, “remain no longer under
the dominion of that prince of cruelty and malice, whose fanatical fury we
see thus exerted against the bodies and minds of the afflicted persons”:
I am this day commanded to call and cry an alarm to you. Arm! Arm!
Arm! Handle your arms … as faithful soldiers under the Captain of our
salvation … [and] be faithful unto death in our spiritual warfare … Let
us admit no parley, give no quarter.48
Lawson urged those in attendance not to be divided, not to “rashly censure”

even those they believed had accused innocent people, because that would
“give … place to the Devil.” The “grand accuser” would take advantage of
such divisions, as he “loves to fish in troubled waters.” If innocent people
were suspected, Lawson offered, “it is to be ascribed to God’s pleasure,
supremely permitting, and Satan’s malice, subordinately troubling.” In other
words, it was better to accuse the innocent, if in the process it was assured
that the guilty would not go undetected!49
Lawson’s sermon was rushed into print with the signed endorsement of
the Reverends Increase and Cotton Mather, Samuel Willard, James Allen,
John Bayley, and Charles Morton. Lawson dedicated it to the “worshipful
and worthily honored” magistrates who had presided over the hearings thus
far, including not only Hathorne and Corwin but also Bartholomew Gedney,
who had been irregularly present, as well as the Reverends John Higginson and
Nicholas Noyes of the Salem town church, who had lent their considerable
support. He addressed the preface to his “Christian friends and acquaintances,
the inhabitants of Salem village.”50
Sarah Cloyce Is Charged

The magistrates were ready to proceed, and, as was often the case in such
matters, the charges brought against Rebecca Nurse raised suspicion against
others in her family, in this case her two sisters. The next to fall would be
Sarah, age forty-eight and the wife of Peter Cloyce. Perhaps paving the way
for suspicion regarding Sarah was her decided and open antipathy toward
the pastors of Salem village and Salem town for their not having protected
Rebecca, one of their most devout parishioners. The triggering event, however,
occurred on March 27, three days after Lawson’s sermon.
It was Sacrament Sunday, and Sarah Cloyce, despite her ill will toward
Parris, sought communion in the village church, which she had joined in 1690.
The service opened peacefully, even though the afflicted girls were present. But
perhaps because Lawson had prepared the way, Parris sought to advance the
call to arms against the Devil’s minions. He chose as the title of his sermon:
“Christ knows how many devils there are in his church, and who they are,” and
he named as his text Christ’s response to Judas’s pending betrayal in John 6:70:
“Have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Upon his naming his
text, Sarah Cloyce stormed from the meetinghouse, slamming the door behind
her (some said the wind blew it shut), and as if on cue, the girls promptly fell
into fits, claiming that Cloyce’s specter afflicted them.51 Calm was restored, and
Parris continued his sermon, but the moment was not forgotten.
In his sermon, Parris built upon the theme that Lawson had employed, and
that he had been developing for more than two years. The Devil, Parris
explained, had breached the security of their covenanted congregation of
God’s elect. He had done so by employing those “vile and wicked” sinners
within their ranks, of whom there may be one, ten, or twenty, and none of
those “vile and wicked” sinners were worse “than those that have been good
and are naught.” Weeks earlier, he had expressed confidence that the church
had been guaranteed safe passage by God over troubled seas, secure at least
within its doors from the corrupting influence of the Devil. Now, he con-
cluded that the church consisted of good and bad, like a garden of both
flowers and weeds, or like the apostles, of saints and an apostate. Much as
Christ knew who the apostate was among the apostles, however, so too
Christ knew the sinners in their midst, so he warned, “Let none … build their
hopes of salvation merely upon this, that they are church members. This you
and I may be, and yet devils for all that.” And as far as people like Rebecca
Nurse were concerned, or Sarah Cloyce – he did not identify anyone in par-
ticular – “the Devil would represent the best saints as devils if he could,” and
he could if they were to abandon their faith, if only secretly.52
Given the sources of conflict between Salem town and Salem village and
of the factionalism that divided Salem village, it is important to note that
Parris went beyond attributing the outbreak of witchcraft to the growing
power of the Devil to include “the pervasiveness of lust,” or greed. Much
as Judas had betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, so too were some of
the people of Salem sacrificing their loyalties for worldly possessions.
Covetousness, he explained, or that which prevented people from giving
themselves wholly up to Christ, “sorely prevails in these perilous times.”
And oftentimes, he insisted, covetousness and witchcraft were manifesta-
tions of the same diabolical menace. Christ knows, he declared, “who they
are that have not chosen him, but prefer farms and merchandise above him
and above his ordinance.”53
Parris nevertheless followed up his remarks with a most interesting decision.
He recalled Mary Sibley’s action, upon hearing of the initial affliction of
Parris’s household, whereby she had sought to counter that affliction with
magic or sorcery of her own – a witch’s cake. Parris condemned such “dia-
bolical actions” as contrary to the gospel. He pointed out that similar
actions on the part of others had raised the Devil amongst them and that
God only knew when he would be silenced again. But, he allowed, Sibley
had meant well. She had acted out of ignorance, confessed, expressed
sorrow for her actions, and promised “future better advisedness and cau-
tion.” He therefore recommended that members of the congregation allow
her to continue in their holy fellowship, and they did so unanimously.54 It is
true that no one had accused Sibley of doing any harm, and that she had
employed witchcraft in an attempt to help the afflicted, but in view of his
conduct toward other practitioners of similar sorceries and the temper of
the times, it was an extraordinary gesture on Parris’s and the congregation’s
part. Unfortunately, it was their last such gesture.
On April 4, Jonathan Walcott and Nathaniel Ingersoll filed complaints
against Sarah Cloyce “for high suspicion of sundry acts of witchcraft,” and
on Friday, April 8, the magistrates issued a warrant for her arrest. Much
like her sister Rebecca, there was nothing in Sarah’s background to make
her particularly suspect as a witch, save her being Rebecca Nurse’s sister,
her criticism of the charges brought against Rebecca, and her action in the
Salem village meetinghouse. She and her husband Peter were of average
means. They and their five children lived on a small farm about two miles
from the meetinghouse, which they rented from Daniel Andrew. Peter had
been among the original signers of the new church covenant of 1689, but
there is no record of his having ever taken sides in any of the church’s dis-
putes over its various ministers.55
On Monday, April 11, Sarah Cloyce appeared before the magistrates,
this time at the meetinghouse in Salem town. The hearing had been moved
to accommodate representatives of the colonial government who had
decided to investigate the developments in Salem. Among the guests were
Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and four prominent members of the
General Court: James Russell, Isaac Addington, Samuel Appleton, and
Samuel Sewall. Massachusetts continued to operate without a charter, but
it had reinstalled their former governor, Simon Bradstreet, who was then
living in Salem. The evidence suggests that even at this early-stage Brad-
street looked with concern, if not disfavor, on the Salem witch trials, but
he was eighty-seven years old and had left most of the executive functions
of his job to Deputy Governor Danforth. Danforth did not share in Bradstreet’s
misgivings.56
Danforth took control of the examination, and he called forward Sarah
Cloyce’s accusers: John Indian, Mary Walcott, Abigail Williams, Mercy
Lewis, and Ann Putnam Jr. Indian was the first to speak. He claimed that
Cloyce had come to him “a great many times” and had choked, bit, and
pinched him. Cloyce called him “a grievous liar,” whereupon Indian fell to
the floor and tumbled about in pain. Danforth turned to the afflicted girls,
and they too condemned Cloyce. Mary Walcott claimed that Cloyce had
brought her “the book” and bid her “touch it and be well.” She then fell into
a fit, but after touching Cloyce and regaining her composure, Walcott added
that Cloyce had not come to her alone, that she was at various times in the
company of Rebecca Nurse, Martha Cory, and “a great many” she did not
know.57
Abigail Williams testified that she had seen Cloyce at a gathering of about
forty witches at the Reverend Parris’s house. Cloyce and Good had served as
deacons and assisted in the sacrament wherein they told Williams that the
group partook of “our blood … twice a day.” She confirmed Walcott’s
report that Cloyce’s specter had accompanied “a white man,” or “a fine
grace man,” to Ingersoll’s ordinary, and that all the witches did tremble in
his presence.58
The testimony weakened Sarah Cloyce’s resolve. Cloyce asked for water
and sat down, only to have the girls cry out that they saw the Black Man
standing beside her whispering in her ear, and a yellow bird, obviously her
familiar, flying about her head. When Cloyce nearly fainted, they announced
that her spirit had gone to prison to visit her sister, Rebecca Nurse.59
The magistrates ordered Sarah Cloyce held for trial. “It is no wonder that
they are witches,” John Putnam is reported to have said upon Cloyce’s being
sent off to prison, “their mother was a witch before them.” But perhaps
Putnam was too outspoken on that occasion. Soon thereafter the specters of
Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyce attacked Putnam’s eight-week-old child, he
reported, torturing it “enough to pierce a stony heart” until it died.60
Mary Esty Is Summoned
To complete our story of the Towne sisters, we must take some liberty with
the chronology to which we have been faithful thus far by a few weeks. The
third and last of the sisters to be charged was Mary Esty of Topsfield, and
the warrant for her arrest was issued on April 21. Mary was fifty-eight years
old, the mother of seven children and the wife of Isaac Esty. The Estys
owned a large and valuable farm and, it should be noted, they had been
active with the Nurses in the Topsfield-Salem village boundary dispute.61
Mary Esty’s hearing began on April 22 in Salem village, the original-Salem
magistrates presiding once again. She approached the court in a different
manner from both of her sisters. Much younger than Rebecca, she did not
enter so failingly, but perhaps because she was several years older than
Sarah, neither did she appear defiant. Instead, as one source has put it, she
“carried herself with such grace, courage and good sense,” that even
Magistrate Hathorne was given pause.62
“Does this woman hurt you?” Hathorne asked the girls, who had initially
either fallen silent or had fallen into fits in Esty’s presence. Abigail Williams
was the first to respond that she did, but Mary Walcott, Ann Putnam, and
John Indian followed her lead. Esty protested her innocence, but when she
tilted her head to one side as if trying to understand what was happening,
the girls’ heads tilted as well into positions so unnatural, it was reported,
that it seemed their necks would break. “Oh, Goody Esty, Goody Esty!”
Ann Putnam screamed in pain, “You are the woman! You are the woman!”
When the magistrates asked Esty if she was responsible for the girls’ tor-
ments, she maintained her innocence. Hathorne inquired about how far she
had complied with the Devil, to which she responded, “I never complied,
but prayed against him all my days.” When pushed to confess, she
answered, “What would you have me do?” She was innocent, and she would
insist to the end that she was “clear of this sin.”63
Once again, Hathorne asked the girls if they were certain Esty was the
woman that had afflicted them, and once again they fell into fits. Overcome
by it all, Esty clasped her hands together, only to have Mercy Lewis’s hands
become clenched and the ritual of physical mimicking begin again. When
calm was restored, Hathorne again asked Esty what she thought of the girls’
torment, and whether she believed it was the result of witchcraft. She
replied, clearly understanding the intent of his question, “It is an evil spirit,
but whether it be witchcraft I do not know.”64
Mary Esty was imprisoned along with her sisters, but there the story took
a curious twist. Unlike many of the others, including her sister Sarah, Mary
resisted railing against her accusers and appears to have been so gentle in
her manner that her jailers took up her cause. The magistrates responded by
interviewing the girls again, and this time they demurred; they were no
longer certain. On May 18, the magistrates ordered Mary Esty’s release, and
she returned to her home in Topsfield. On May 20, however, Mercy Lewis,
the only person among Mary’s accusers who had not cleared her, was taken
violently ill. While at the home of John Putnam Jr., Lewis first experienced
considerable pain, then lapsed into a coma from which she awoke only long
enough to utter her prayers and then suffer a relapse. “Dear Lord, receive
my soul,” she pleaded aloud, and “Lord, let them not kill me quite.”65
Word spread that Lewis was dying, and it was clear to her observers that
Lewis’s agony had been brought about by Mary Esty. Still, the magistrates
were reluctant to act without further evidence. Samuel Abbey, John Putnam’s
neighbor, who was present at the Putnams’ home on the morning of the
twentieth, provided a detailed account. Abbey reported that he had found
Mercy Lewis in “a terrible condition, crying with piteous tones of
anguish.” She had urged that those nearby pray for the salvation of her
soul “for they [the specters] will kill me outright.” Abbey reported that he
was asked to summon Ann Putnam, the younger, to see if she could
determine who it was that hurt Lewis. Finding Abigail Williams with Ann
Putnam, Abbey brought both back to John Putnam’s home, but even
before they arrived they cried out that they saw the apparition of Mary
Esty afflicting Lewis. When they arrived at Lewis’s bedside, they added the
names of John Willard and Mary Whittredge.66
Mary Walcott was summoned, and she saw Mary “pressing upon her
[Lewis’s] breasts with both hands,” putting chains about Lewis’s neck and
choking her. When Elizabeth Hubbard was brought in, she offered much the
same testimony. Walcott explained that they had had second thoughts con-
cerning Mary Esty, because she had blinded them. Not being able to blind
her, Walcott added, Mary chose to kill her!67
When Lewis’s state grew critical – when, as some reported, it seemed she
would not live to see the next day – Marshall George Herrick was sum-
moned. He found Lewis, in his own words, “in a very dreadful and solemn
condition, so that to our apprehension she could not continue long in this
world without a mitigation of those torments we saw her in.” John Putnam
Jr. and Benjamin Hutchinson made a formal complaint, and Magistrate
Hathorne ordered Mary Esty’s arrest. That evening, Mary was taken into
custody again, but Lewis’s torment did not subside. It was only the next
afternoon, after Mary had been arraigned and “laid in irons,” that Lewis’s
agony lessened, and she fell into a deep, natural, and healing sleep.68 The
magistrates had learned their lesson; they would not again let their sympathies
for the accused risk the lives of the afflicted.
The Pace Quickens

The cases of Martha Cory and Rebecca Nurse, the sermons of Deodat
Lawson and Samuel Parris, and the participation of the visiting colonial
officials made it clear to many in Salem village that they were engaged in a
major, perhaps cosmic, as Lawson had termed it, battle with the forces of
evil, and that those forces could be found in their midst, even in the House
of the Lord. Not only was the battle raging all around them, but their last
refuge from the Devil had been lost. Almost anyone could, and would,
become suspect.
The pace thus far had been slow. By the first of March, only three wit-
ches had been named. By early April, six (possible seven) had been
charged, but then the pace quickened, and the geographic area involved
expanded. Four were arrested on April 18, nine on April 21, five on April
30, eight on May 14, and eleven on May 28. Seventy people stood accused
by June 2, including not only twenty-five from Salem village, which
retained the dubious distinction of being the hub of witch-hunting activity,
but ten from nearby Salem town; seven from Topsfield; four from Read-
ing; three each from Beverly, Billerica, and Lynn; two from Charlestown,
Malden, and Woburn; and one each from nine other towns in eastern
Massachusetts. By the time the trials ended, at least 160 people stood
accused from an even larger area.69
Three general points concerning the numbers of the accused should be
made, however, lest they get lost in the narrative. First, as the geographical
distribution suggests, to a degree it is misleading to refer to what happened
in 1692 as the Salem witch trials. The trials may have begun in Salem vil-
lage, but charges soon spread throughout Essex County, eastern Massachu-
setts, and even into other parts of New England. The first twelve to be
accused lived in, or near, Salem village, and the afflicted girls of Salem were
instrumental in the charging of suspected witches near and far. By June 2,
however, and increasingly thereafter, more of the accused lived outside of
Salem village, and even Salem town, than within the community where it all
began. Of the approximately 150 that were formally charged, fewer than 20
percent came from Salem village. Fewer than 30 percent of the accused
resided in either Salem village or Salem town, while roughly only half of
those executed came from one or the other.70
Second, in the types of people involved and the nature of the charges
made, what happened until March 1, 1692, fit the pattern for other indi-
vidual and small-scale witch-hunts in New England prior to 1692. There-
after, especially beginning in April, in their intensity – measured by the
number of people accused, tried, condemned, and hanged in such a brief
period of time – the witch trials tended to reach beyond the usual group of
suspects. They began to follow the rules, if not the pattern, of much larger
hunts, like that of mid-seventeenth-century England and of various loca-
tions on the Continent.
Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osburn fit our definition of those who
were most likely to be suspected of witchcraft in limited witch-hunts. Those
who followed increasingly did not. More men than usual would be charged,
as would greater numbers of those from a distinctly higher social class. Two
of the three who were accused in March (the third being Dorothy, the
daughter of Sarah Good) were highly regarded church members and the
wives of relatively prosperous freeholders. Included among those accused in
April were Philip English, one of the wealthiest men in New England, and a
minister, George Burroughs.
By the end of the summer, as we shall see, some of the most prominent
people in the colony would be named, if not officially charged, including the
wife of Governor Phips As Thomas Newton, prosecuting attorney for the
Court of Oyer and Terminer, was forced to conclude: “The afflicted spare
no person of what quality so ever.”71 It is true that three-quarters of those
charged with witchcraft in 1692 continued to be women, and that most of
them were of the lower-middling sort, and that few of those suspected
people of quality were ever brought to trial, much less executed. The overall
direction of the accusations was clear, however, and the reader may be
tempted to speculate where, if the trials had not been so abruptly termi-
nated, it all might have led. But then perhaps that is why the trials came to
such an abrupt halt. As Cotton Mather wrote a decade later:
The more there were apprehended, the more were still afflicted by Satan;
and the number of confessors increasing, did but increase the number of
the accused … [T]hose that were concerned, grew amazed at the number
and quality of the persons accused, and feared that Satan by his wiles had
enwrapped innocent persons under the imputation of [witchcraft].72
Third, no matter how far afield the witch trials spread, the girls remained at
center stage. In 1711, nearly twenty years after the fact, the Massachusetts
General Court described some of the girls as having “proved themselves
profligate persons, abandoned to all vice,” and others as having since “passed
their days in obscurity and contempt.”73 But that was not the perception of
most in 1692; indeed, it was quite the opposite. It was decided early on that
the girls were not possessed, but afflicted, and from that point on the trials
relied almost exclusively on the evidence only they, as the afflicted, could
provide.
Historians have been of different minds in assessing the behavior of the
young accusers. Charles Upham was among the first to suspect fraud, but he
allowed that “credulity, hallucination, and the delirium of excitement” con-
tributed to the girls’ behavior as well.74 Most other historians have been
more single-minded, some insisting that the girls should have been charged
with fraud, others offering psychological, sociological, and even physical
interpretations. Attempts at establishing physical causation have largely
failed.75 A few have been willing to consider the possibility that the girls
were possessed or afflicted in seventeenth-century terms. Some historians
have defended the girls – or at least some of them, like Elizabeth Parris – as
being seriously troubled or victims. Ernest Caulfield, for example, has pro-
nounced them the victims of “the worst sort of mental distress – living in
fear for their very lives and the welfare of their immortal souls.”76 And
Chadwick Hansen has agreed, calling the girls hysterics, in that they were
not merely over-excited, but mentally ill.77
John Demos has cited intergenerational conflict and child-rearing practices
as lying at the core of the girls’ problems. To read Paul Boyer and Stephen
Nissenbaum, we might conclude that they were merely pawns in the deadly
game of community crisis politics in which their parents were engaged. And
from Carol Karlsen, we might see the girls as being used by the enforcers of
traditional gender roles against those who would violate them. But as with so
many questions raised by the study of the Salem witch trials, we are not likely
to ever know for sure what led the girls to act the way they did.
As the story unfolds, readers will be left to draw their own conclusions
regarding the accusing girls’ motives, but some further observations might
be in order on this point as well. Elizabeth Parris was the first to crack, but
soon there were four among the original accusers. Elizabeth and Abigail
dropped out of the proceedings relatively early, but they were replaced by
several others, most of whom had nothing to do with whatever happened in
the Parris house during the winter of 1691–1692.78
Further, if members of Parris’s household – Betty Parris and Abigail
Williams – were indeed young, ages nine and eleven respectively, those who
followed were drawn increasingly from their older female and even male
neighbors. Ann Putnam Jr. may have been only twelve and Elizabeth Hub-
bard only seventeen, but soon most were in their late teens, some in their
twenties and thirties, and a few even older. If, as most allow, Betty and
Abigail were traumatized by something that happened that winter and Ann
Putnam was caught up in the nearly insane obsessions of her mother, what
motivated the rest?
Of this we may never be certain, but it is clear that once involved, except for
Betty Parris and Abigail Williams, the accusers were swept along by the tide
they helped create, but which they could not control and from which they could
not extricate themselves. And they did not act alone. They had to have some
help, if only to accuse the many with whom they had no previous acquaintance.
Perhaps the accusers simply availed themselves of local gossip or the uninten-
tional, but nonetheless deadly, asides of those attending to them. It is also
possible, however, although the evidence remains circumstantial, that they
were prompted by individuals with more nefarious intentions.
Notes
1 Larry Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis (New York: Praeger, 1992), 56; Paul Boyer
and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, The Social Origins of Witchcraft
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 146. Martha and Giles Cory
are often referred to as Corey, Dorothy Good as Dorcas Good.
Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 66; Gragg, The Salem
Witch Crisis, 56.
3 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 56; Records of the Salem With-Hunt, ed. Bernard
Rosenthal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 149–151.
5 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 142, 338, 152–153.
6 Deodat Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative of Witchcraft at Salem Village (1692),
in George Lincoln Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 153; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 69.
The title “Goodwife,” or the informal “Goody,” was used when referring to women
of less than gentry rank.
7 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 69; Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 154.
9 Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 154; Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 59.
10 Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 154; Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 59.
11 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 143; Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft
(Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 38.
15 Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 156; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 45, 65;
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 145.
16 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 155; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 39.
17 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 145–147; Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 62.
19 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 82–83. John and Elizabeth Procter are often
referred to as Proctor.
20 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 83–84; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt,
186–188.
21 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 84.
22 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 122–123; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 106.
24 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 153–156; Lawson, A Brief and True Narra-
tive, 159–160; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 75; Emerson W. Baker, A
Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experienced (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 306 note 15.
26 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 76–77; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Pos-
sessed, 149, 199–200.
28 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 57; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 152–153.
30 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 57; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 149.
31 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 160–161; Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 63.
32 Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 157–158; Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft
Crisis, 63.
35 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 162.
Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative, 158–159.
40 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, II: 585–587. Somewhat
conflicting accounts persist in this matter but do not affect the outcome.
41 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 66.
42 Extensive excerpts from Lawson’s text are included in Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
II: 77–87.
43 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 77–78.
48 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 80, 82, 85.
51 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 94; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 89.
52 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 68, 146; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem
Possessed, 172.
53 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 172. Parris’s sermon is reprinted in Paul
Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary
Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England (Boston, MA: Boston Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 129–131.
54 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 68–69; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem
Village Witchcraft, 278–279; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 95–96.
55 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 76; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed,
182.
56 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 99–100; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 90–91.
57 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 173; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 102–103.
61 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 138. Mary Esty is often referred to as Mary Easty.
65 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 112–113; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 201.
67 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 115; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 201.
68 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 202–204; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 298–299.
69 Gragg, The Salem Witchcraft Crisis, 82; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem
Witchcraft Papers, I: 10. Emerson Baker has found that Ann Putnam, Jr. alone
had accused seven witches by mid-March. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 21.
70 Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 205–206.
71 Quoted in Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 32.
72 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 151.
75 See, for example, Linnda Caporael, “Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?”
Science, 192 (April 2, 1976): 21–26, and its rebuttal, Nicholas P. Spanos and Jack
Gottlieb, “Ergotism and the Salem Village Witch Trials,” Science, 194 (December
24, 1976): 1390–1394.
76 Ernest Caulfield, “Pediatric Aspects of the Salem Witchcraft Tragedy,” American
Journal of Diseases of Children, 65 (May 1943): 788–802.
77 Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York: George Braziller, 1969), x.
5 “If They Are Let Alone We Should
All Be Devils and Witches”
Although in April 1692 most of the inhabitants of Salem village were convinced
that the Devil was in their midst, not all were so persuaded, and at least a few
were willing to make their sentiments known. When Joseph Putnam learned
that his brother’s wife, Ann Putnam, was adding to the list of the accused, he is
reported to have warned her that if she dared touch with her “foul lies” anyone
belonging to his household, she would “answer for it.”1 George Jacobs, whose
servant Sarah Churchill was among the possessed, called them “bitch witches.”2
But the best known of the early critics was John Procter, whose case has been
popularized (and fictionalized) by Arthur Miller in The Crucible (1952).
The Cases of Elizabeth and John Procter

In 1692, John Procter was sixty years old and a prosperous landowner and
tavern keeper on Ipswich Road. A native of Ipswich, he came to the area in
1666, while in his mid-thirties, leasing one of the area’s largest farms, at
some 700 acres, lying just beyond the village’s southeast corner. Upon the
death of his father, Procter inherited a one-third share in an estate of more
than 1,200 pounds, about 60 percent of the value of which consisted of
houses and lands that he rented.3
Procter was moderately active in Ipswich, Salem, and Boston area affairs,
through which he made a number of close friends. For example, in 1689, in
arranging for the disposition of his estate upon his death, Procter named
four “trusty and well-beloved friends” as trustees, including one man from
Concord, two from Salem town, and Israel Porter of Salem village. After his
imprisonment in 1692, thirty-two Ipswich residents, including minister John
Wise, signed a petition on his behalf.4 Procter had avoided most of Salem
village’s squabbles. When the witch trials began, however, Procter’s servant,
Mary Warren, was among the afflicted, and he was opposed to her partici-
pation. In one early instance he reported to a neighbor that he had cured
Mary Warren of her fits by sitting her down at her spinning wheel and
threatening her with a thrashing if she stirred from it, afflicted or not. He
protested her continued use by the court, but to no avail. “She must have
her fits again,” Procter concluded in frustration.5
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-6
112 “If They Are Let Alone We Should All Be Devils and Witches”
Arriving in the village to pick up his servant on the day after Deodat
Lawson’s call to arms, Procter once again made his objections clear. “They
should rather be had to the whipping post,” he said of the girls. “If they are
let alone we should all be devils and witches.” As for him, he would “fetch
his jade [Mary Warren] home and thrash the Devil out of her,” and, if given
the chance, he would do the same with the others. Witches were not to be
found among decent women, he insisted, but they may well be discovered
among the afflicted girls.6 At a time when the people of Salem were being
forced to take the side of God or risk being seen as having sided with the
Devil, Procter’s was an unwise, or at least an unsafe, position to take. When
the afflicted girls struck back, however, they began with his wife.
Elizabeth Procter, John’s third wife, was as well respected as her hus-
band. By April 1692, she had been married to John for eighteen years, and
she was pregnant with his seventeenth child. Elizabeth ran the family
tavern, and therein lies the only shadow cast upon her reputation. On two
occasions, she had quarrelled with Robert Stone over “a reckoning” and
with Hugh Jones over a pint of cider for which he had not paid. Many years
earlier, Elizabeth’s grandmother, Ann Burt of Lynn, had been suspected of
witchcraft, but no mention of the case appears in the records of Elizabeth’s
hearing.7
Only a few days after John’s outburst against the girls, on Monday,
March 28, 1692, one of the girls then at Ingersoll’s ordinary (perhaps Mercy
Lewis, but the record is unclear) cried out against Elizabeth Procter. “Goody
Procter … Old Witch! I’ll have her hang.” In this instance, Sarah Ingersoll,
Daniel Elliot, and William Raymond immediately charged her with lying,
whereupon she “came out of her trance” and explained, “It was for sport. I
must have some sport.”8 Similar developments, however, occurred the next
day at the home of Thomas Putnam. Ann Putnam Sr. and Jr., as well as
their nineteen-year-old servant Mercy Lewis, suffered fits. Lewis called out
Elizabeth Procter’s name, but when questioned by those present, Lewis
replied that if she had done so, she had done it “when she was out of her
head.” Complaints were made nevertheless, and a warrant was issued for
Procter’s arrest on April 8, the same day the magistrates ordered Sarah
Cloyce arrested.9
Elizabeth Procter appeared before the magistrates on April 11, her hus-
band John standing by her side. Perhaps John’s show of support had some
effect initially on those who would bear witness against Elizabeth, because
the questioning did not follow its usual course. Deputy Governor Danforth
inquired as to whether she understood the charges that had been brought
against her (“sundry acts of witchcraft”), to which she did not immediately
respond, or at least her response was not included in the record. Danforth
asked Mary Walcott whether Elizabeth Procter was the woman who had
hurt her, but Walcott replied, “I never saw her so as to be hurt by her.” He
asked the same question of Mercy Lewis, Ann Putnam Jr. and Abigail
Williams, but none responded. According to the records, Lewis’s “mouth
“If They Are Let Alone We Should All Be Devils and Witches” 113
was stopped,” Putnam “could not speak,” and Williams’s “hand was thrust
in her own mouth.”10
John Indian was the first to make a positive identification. “There is the
woman who came in her shift and choked me,” he said, and brought him a
book to sign. The girls continued to remain silent, “by reason of dumbness
or other fits,” but Elizabeth Procter broke her silence. “I take God in heaven
to be my witness, that I know nothing of it, no more than the child
unborn,” she pleaded, but that only seemed to release the pent-up energies
of the young girls. Ann Putnam was the first to find her tongue, but then all
of the girls began to cry out against Procter. Each testified that Procter had
been after them to sign the book, Williams adding that she had “made her maid
[Mary Warren, not present] set her hand to it.” “Dear child, it is not so,”
answered Elizabeth, and she warned, “There is another judgment, dear child.”
Neither Abigail nor the court, however, was concerned with any later call to
the bar of justice. The girls merely fell into fits and pointed to Procter’s specter,
perched on a beam above the gathering of amazed people.11
Danforth employed the Lord’s Prayer test on Elizabeth Procter, and as
expected, she stumbled twice in ways that were meaningful to the court. In
the first instance, instead of saying “deliver us from evil,” she said, “deliver
us from all evil.” And when asked to try again, where she should have said
“hallowed be thy name,” she prayed, “hollowed be thy name.” Upon her
first error, the court reasoned that Procter had “prayed against what she was
now justly under”; and, in the second, they concluded that her words were
“a depraving” of the real words, making them void and even “a curse rather
than a prayer.”12
Although it does not appear in the records, it is possible that John Procter
expressed his indignation over the attack on his wife, because at one point in
the hearing the girls turned on him. Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams
called him a wizard and fell into fits. Some of the girls (their names were not
listed in the record) cried, “There is Procter going to take up Goody Pope’s
feet,” and Pope’s feet were immediately taken up, whereupon she immedi-
ately fell into a fit. When asked to explain the girls’ fits while in his pre-
sence, John Procter could only say, “I know not. I am innocent.”13
Danforth was not impressed. “You see, the Devil will deceive you,” he
responded. “The children could see what you were going to do before the
woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the Devil is bringing
you out.” Repent he did not, however, and if the Devil did not bring him
out, others did. Benjamin Gould testified that he had seen the Procters, Giles
and Martha Cory, Cloyce, Nurse, and Goody Griggs in his chamber that
past Thursday evening. Abigail Williams once again cried out that Procter
was going to hurt Goody Bibber; and indeed, Bibber fell into a fit. Williams
and Putnam both tried to strike Elizabeth Procter, but they were held back
by an invisible force. As Williams’s fist came near Procter, it was forced
open and it alighted only lightly on him, whereupon she cried out that her
fingers burned.14
By the end of the day, John Procter joined his wife, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah
Cloyce, Martha Cory, and Dorothy Good in a cart bound for Boston and
for prison. The accusers, however, were not yet done with the Procters. In
one of the most extensive cases of family culpability in the records of the
Salem witch trials, four of the Procter children were accused of witchcraft.
Three were the subject of arrest warrants: Sarah Procter on May 21, Benja-
min on May 23, and William on May 28. Joseph Procter was named but
there is no record of his arrest. All of the warrants made essentially the
same charge. The Procters’ children were accused of afflicting, causing
“great hurt” to, or committing “sundry acts of witchcraft … upon the
bodies” of Mary Warren, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Wal-
cott, Ann Putnam Jr., Sarah Churchill, and others. If they were ever tried,
the records of their trials have not survived, so we have no information
regarding what followed. We do know, however, that unlike their father,
they at least escaped with their lives.15
One of the more interesting elements of the Procter children’s story
involves a letter written by John Procter and other prisoners on July 23,
1692, to the Reverends Increase Mather, James Allen, Joshua Moody,
Samuel Willard, and John Bayley. The trials had begun, and Procter’s prin-
cipal goal was to gain the support of those notable ministers for either a
change of venue to Boston, where they believed they would be more fairly
treated, or failing that, for the replacement of the judges that were sitting on
the Court of Oyer and Terminer. The current judges had condemned them
even before their trials had begun, Procter insisted. The judges “being so
much incensed and enraged against [them] by the Devil,” they would settle
for nothing less than their “innocent blood.”16
John Procter also made one of the few surviving references to the use of
torture in the Salem witch trials. Torture, it will be recalled, was not per-
mitted under British law. Procter, however, charged that two (Richard and
Thomas Carrier) of the five people who had recently confessed and accused
others had done so only after they had their necks and heels tied “till the
blood was ready to come out of their noses.” Procter’s son William received
the same treatment, “until the blood gushed out at his nose,” and he was left
tied in that painful position for twenty-four hours, Procter added, if “one,
more merciful than the rest, had not taken pity on him, and caused him to
be unbound.” Nevertheless, William did not confess.17
Given the presence of the colonial luminaries, the Cloyce and Procter cases
of April 11 constituted another important step in the development of the Salem
witch trials. In their presence and with their approval, both of the defendants
were deemed sufficiently suspect to be held for trial. Samuel Sewall recorded his
thoughts in his diary: “Went to Salem, where in the meetinghouse the persons
accused of witchcraft were examined; was a very great assembly; ’twas awful
to see how the afflicted persons were agitated.” In the margin, sometime after-
ward, he added in Latin, “Vae” (“Alas”) three times.18 What had begun as a
village or at best a town affair was no longer so parochial.
But even more interesting developments followed upon the Procter hearings.
It seems that perhaps because of John Procter’s stern reproaches, or maybe
because of some affection she may have had for him if not his wife,
Mary Warren, Procter’s twenty-year-old servant, began to recant her earlier
testimony and to suggest that others among the afflicted may have lied.19
Mary Warren Tries to Recant

Mary Warren had not taken part in the cases brought against her master
and mistress, and that at their hearing on April 11, from which Warren was
absent, Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams had accused Elizabeth Procter of
having forced Mary Warren to sign the Devil’s book. Quite likely, the girls
anticipated Warren’s defection and to protect themselves they were prepared
to turn against their former compatriot. And sure enough, on April 18,
Mary Warren was among those listed on a new warrant for arrest.20
On April 19, Warren appeared before the magistrates in Salem village,
this time on the other side of the bar of justice. Hathorne led the question-
ing and as usual began by informing her of the charges brought against her.
Warren pleaded innocent, whereupon Hathorne asked the girls if Warren
had hurt them. “Some were dumb,” Parris’s official notes read, but Elizabeth
Hubbard cried out against Warren and fell into a fit. Hathorne turned to
Warren and asked, “You were a little while ago an afflicted person; now you
are an afflicter. How comes this to pass?” Mary Warren, in the presence of
her judges, neighbors, and former accusing sisters, was rattled. “I look up to
God, and I take it to be a mercy of God,” she responded. “What!” Hathorne
exploded, no doubt surprised by what he had heard. “Do you take it as a
great mercy to afflict others?”21
Warren seemed even more confused, and much to everyone’s surprise she
fell into fits, writhing in pain and seemingly unable to control herself any
longer. Some of the afflicted cried out that Warren was going to confess, the
records continue, “but Goody Corey and Procter and his wife came in, in
their apparitions, and struck her down, and said she should tell nothing.”
For the moment Warren could not speak, but soon she cried out again, “I
will speak! Oh, I am sorry for it! I am sorry for it!” She wrung her hands
and again fell into a fit, only to recover and add, “Oh Lord help me! Oh,
good Lord, save me!” and, later, “I will tell! I will tell!” A great struggle had
broken out within Mary Warren, and just as suddenly as it had begun she
became speechless, swooned, and had to be carried from the meetinghouse.22
Sometime later, Warren was recalled, but once again she lapsed in and
out of fits, speaking when she could. In an extraordinary move on the part
of the court, the magistrates granted Mary Warren a private hearing. The
records of that interview suggest a woman who was in and out of reality, or
of a woman who was alternately trying to confess to having lied and then
falling back in fear of the repercussions that confession would bring about
for her. “I will, I will speak, Satan!” she exclaimed. “She saith she will kill
me! Oh, she saith she owes me a spite and will claw me off. Avoid, Satan,
for the name of God, avoid!” Who was “she”? Elizabeth Procter? Perhaps,
but Mary Warren did not actually name her.23
As one author has said, Mary Warren was no Joan of Arc, and even Joan
of Arc could not stand the pressures upon her to tell the truth come what
may. Like Joan, Warren was sent to prison, but the possibility that she
might have lied to the magistrates was potentially damaging enough to per-
suade the magistrates to continue her questioning for the next several weeks.
Reports about her behavior in prison were just as disturbing. It seems that
when she was alone, she behaved as rationally as anyone. In her conversa-
tions with the other prisoners, against whom her former afflicted colleagues
had borne witness, she even reasserted her skepticism – her disbelief in the
truthfulness of those who had cried out against them. Four of those prison-
ers – Edward and Sarah Bishop, Mary Esty, and Mary English – prepared a
deposition in which they offered the following report:
We have heard Mary Warren several times say that the magistrates
might as well examine Keyser’s daughter that has been distracted many
years, and take notice of what she said, as well as any of the afflicted
persons. “For,” said Mary Warren, “when I was afflicted, I thought I
saw the apparitions of a hundred persons,” [but] she said her head was
distempered that she could not tell what she said. And the said Mary
told us, that, when she was well again, she could not say that she saw
any of the apparitions at the time aforesaid.24
Mary Warren’s meetings with the magistrates, which took place between
April 21 and May 12, were marked by periodic fits and moments of
lucidity, but they always ended with her confessing. Perhaps she was just
confessing to whatever they wanted to hear; maybe she was telling the
truth, at least as she saw it. In either event, her confession took place in
stages. On April 21, she said John Procter had brought her a book, but
she denied having signed it “unless putting her finger to it was signing.”
When asked whether she had seen a spot in the book where she had put
her finger, she answered that there was indeed a black spot. And when
asked if John Procter had threatened to run hot tongs down her throat if
she did not sign, she answered that he had threatened to “burn her out
of her fits.”25
At one point, Warren testified that her master had “put her hand to the
book,” whereupon she “was undone body and soul and cried out grie-
vously.” Her interrogators told Warren that she must have touched the book
voluntarily, because the Devil could not have forced her to do so against her
will. She had succumbed, they insisted, “for the ease of her body, not for
any good of her soul,” to which she did report that John and Elizabeth
Procter had threatened to drown her and “to make her run through the
hedges” if she did not.26
On May 12, Warren reported that upon one occasion when she was
afflicted, John Procter had said to her, “If you are afflicted, I wish you were
more afflicted and you and all.” When she asked why he had said such a
thing, he responded, “Because you go to bring out innocent persons.”
Warren protested that “that could not be”; whether the Devil had taken
advantage of her to afflict them, however, she did not know.27
Mary Warren was more specific and damning in her testimony against
Elizabeth Procter than she was against John. Warren reported having seen
suspicious objects in Elizabeth’s house and in her possession, including
ointments, a poppet stuck with pins, and strange books. One poppet, she
responded, was for either Ann Putnam Jr. or Abigail Williams, she could
not be certain, but Warren had upon that occasion, while Elizabeth Procter
had the poppet, stuck a pin into it. Those revelations seem to have been
enough to provoke Elizabeth Procter, because on at least one occasion in the
presence of the magistrates, on April 21, Warren had to fight off her specter.
Once again, she cried out, “I will tell! I will tell! Thou wicked creature, it is
you that stopped my mouth, but I will confess.” This time, however, she
added, “Oh Betty Procter, it is she. It is she I lived with last.” Elizabeth
Procter had undone her, “body and soul.”28
Warren salvaged her credibility by adding to the evidence gathered against
several of those already charged, including Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Cloyce,
Sarah and Dorothy Good, Giles and Martha Cory, and others. She also
explained the supernatural causes of the death of a man on a vessel in Salem
harbor, the falling of a man from a cherry tree, and even the mysterious
casting away of a ketch or small ship.29
Having heard what they wanted from her, the magistrates considered
Mary Warren free of the Devil’s grip. They released her from jail and
allowed her to rejoin the girls in court. Mary never again led the demon-
strations, but neither did she question what was being said or done.
Although readmitted to her circle of friends, she was no doubt viewed with
suspicion thereafter. Although she had recanted her earlier confession of
having dissembled, there were some who continued to believe that Warren
had in fact told the truth, and although she had in the end told the magis-
trates what they wanted to hear, it could hardly have been the case that they
or others, animated by the spirit of finding the witches in their midst, were
any longer totally comfortable with her as an informer.30
Bridget Bishop and Abigail Hobbs Are Charged

On April 19 three others joined Mary Warren in the Salem meetinghouse:
Giles Cory, of whom we have already spoken; Bridget Bishop, of Salem
village; and Abigail Hobbs, of Topsfield. Bridget Bishop’s was a classic
case in that she had been suspected for some time and actually charged in
1679 but acquitted for lack of evidence.31 It was also unique, however, in
that on some key points the evidence used against her constituted a case of
mistaken identity, an error not brought to light until 1981 by David L.
Greene.
Greene discovered that the testimony offered by Sarah Churchill and Susannah
Sheldon was taken from details provided by the Reverend John Hale in the case
of Sarah Bishop of nearby Beverly. The references by Churchill and Sheldon to
Bridget Bishop, the tavern keeper who had permitted young people to gather all
hours to play shuffleboard and to make so much noise that they disturbed the
neighbors, as well as to her having worn “a red paragon bodice” and other flashy
apparel, had nothing to do with Bridget; they originated with Hale’s testimony
concerning Sarah Bishop.32
What we do know about Bridget Bishop is that she was between fifty-five
and sixty years old, and that she had been married three times. She was the
widow Wasselbe on July 26, 1666, when she married Thomas Oliver, a
widower with three children. They brought another daughter into the
world, but their marriage was a troubled one. In January 1670, Bridget and
Thomas were found guilty of fighting with one another and sentenced,
barring payment of a fine, to be publicly whipped. At their trial, a neigh-
bor testified that Bridget’s face had been bloodied on one occasion and
made black-and-blue on another. Thomas Oliver protested that Bridget
had given him “several blows.”33
In January 1678, Bridget was back in court for calling her husband names
on the Lord’s Day, but authorities obviously found fault with Thomas as
well, because they sentenced both to stand gagged in the marketplace, a sign
on their heads indicating their offenses. Thomas’s daughter paid her father’s
fine, which released him from punishment, but there is no record of
Bridget’s having been released.34
In 1680, Bridget Oliver was charged with witchcraft. Little is known of
the case except that there is no record of conviction. The charge came from
a man described as “Wonn, John Ingersoll’s Negro,” who told a story of
frightened horses, the vanishing shape of Bridget Oliver, the appearance of
an unknown cat, and mysterious pinchings and pain. John Lambert, Jona-
than Pickering, and “some youths” corroborated Wonn’s testimony regard-
ing the horses, offering that they believed them to have been bewitched. The
charge came soon after the death of Bridget’s husband in 1679. Because
Thomas had died without a will, Bridget was appointed executor of his
estate. Thomas’s sons by his first wife, and their daughter, Christian,
received twenty shillings each, but Bridget was ordered to pay her deceased
husband’s debts. She was granted permission to sell a ten-acre lot to pay
those debts and to provide for herself.35
Sometime before 1687, Bridget married Edward Bishop. In 1687, Thomas
Stacey charged her with stealing his brass. She was arrested on December
14, but her hearing did not take place until the following March. The only
person to testify against Bishop was William Stacey, presumably Thomas’s
son, but John Hathorne, presiding, ordered Bridget Bishop to jail until “her
trial at the next Sessions of the Peace.” Edward Bishop and William Reeves
posted bond for her release, but there is no record of the case having been
heard.36 She did not return to court until April 19, 1692.
On April 19, Bridget Bishop stated her case directly: “I take all this people
to witness that I am clear.” In a second account of the examination, Bishop
is reported to have said: “I never did hurt them in my life. I never saw these
persons before. I am as innocent as the child unborn.” She further swore
that she had never even ventured into Salem village center. But the girls fell
into their fits, and when Hathorne asked Bishop if it troubled her to see the
girls so tormented, she simply said, “No.”37
The girls testified that upon one occasion, when Bridget Bishop’s shape
appeared to them, they had pointed to the spot where she stood, and Mary
Walcott’s brother Jonathan had struck her with his sword. Walcott cried
out that Jonathan had hit Bishop and torn her coat. Hathorne had Bishop’s
coat examined, and although some disagreement followed on what they
saw, Cheever’s records read that they did find a tear that “seems to answer
what was alleged was found.”38
Marshall Herrick stepped forward to ask how Bishop had come to be in
his bedchamber one morning, asking whether he had any curtains to sell
her. She denied having been there, only to have the afflicted retake the floor
and recall the earlier charges of murder that had been brought against her.
“They say you bewitched your first husband to death,” Hathorne continued,
but Bishop replied that she knew nothing of it. She said she was not guilty,
but as she did, she shook her head and “the afflicted were tortured.” She
turned up her eyes, and the eyes of the afflicted rolled in their sockets.
Indeed, the girls fell into such torment that Hathorne could no longer take
it. He asked that if it were true that she was not a witch, then why did her
“appearance” hurt the girls: “Why, you seem to act witchcraft before us!” “I
know nothing of it,” she replied. “I am innocent to a witch. I know not
what a witch is.”39 The magistrates ordered Bridget Bishop held, and she
too was carted off to prison.
And then there was fourteen-year-old Abigail Hobbs, described by one
historian as “a wild creature” and by another as “deranged.” Her mother,
Deliverance Hobbs, had once said that “she little thought to be mother of
such a dafter.” Hobbs had long shocked the people of Topsfield by her
rambling about the woods at night. One of her accusers, in commenting on
her behavior, had explained that whereas others might be afraid to wander
in the forest at night, she was not, because she believed “she had sold herself
body and soul to the old boy.”40
Abigail, however, perhaps because she was “a dafter,” was a match for
her accusers. Not only did the girls fail to alarm her in the least, but she
added to the mayhem by confessing to “crimes enough to have hanged her a
dozen times.” She admitted to having met the Devil and signed his book
four years earlier at Casco Bay (Maine), where the Hobbs had lived in the
late 1680s. This would have been in 1688 before the outbreak of King Wil-
liam’s War, which pitted the English settlers against Native Americans and
the French, forcing several refugees to flee to Essex County where some
became involved in the Salem witch trials, including the afflicted Mercy
Lewis. He was “like a black man with a hat,” she recalled, and he had told
her that if she consented, he would hurt people in her shape. She described
in detail the witches’ Sabbaths in Parris’s pasture. She named nine witches
who had been present, as well as the Boston woman Tituba had seen who
was dressed in a silk mantle. And she confessed to having hurt Mercy Lewis
and Ann Putnam.41
One witness reported that during a conversation with Abigail about “her
wicked carriages and disobedience to her father and mother,” Hobbs had
said that “she did not care what anybody said to her, for she had seen the
Devil and had made a covenant or bargain with him.” Another testified that
upon one occasion in her mother’s presence, Abigail had asked the woman if
she was baptized. When she said yes, Abigail offered, “My mother is not
baptized, but I will baptize her,” whereupon she sprinkled water in her
mother’s face “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”42
On April 20, Abigail Hobbs continued her self-condemnation. She
declared that Judah White, who recently arrived from the Isle of Jersey,
and who had lived with Joseph Ingersoll at Casco Bay but had since moved
to Boston, had appeared to her in apparition. White had advised her to flee
and to not go to the examination, but if she did go, not to confess to
anything. Hobbs confessed that the Devil had come to her and pressed her
to afflict the girls. He had brought with him wooden images in their like-
nesses with thorns she could stick into them, and she had, whereupon the
girls cried out in pain. The magistrates returned Hobbs to jail, but Hobbs
was still not done. When the magistrates visited her, she confessed to
murder. “Were they men or women you killed?” the magistrates asked.
“They were both boys and girls,” she responded. And when they asked if
she was angry with them at the time, she answered, “Yes, though I do not
know why now.” Historian Emerson Baker has argued that Abigail
Hobbs’s confession was a turning point in the trials, as she introduced the
frontier war into the proceedings, and set the stage for the arrest of George
Burroughs, former minister of Falmouth, Maine, as well as Salem Village.
Two days later, Ann Putnam Jr. saw Burroughs’s and Hobbs’s specters,
the former having tried to force Putnam to sign his book. Burroughs’s
specter told Ann that he had killed his first two wives, and the wife and
child of Salem town minister, Deodat Lawson. On May 5, Burroughs – “a
bastion of faith” – was arrested.43
On April 21, 1692, the Salem magistrates issued warrants for the arrest of
Mary Esty (whose hearing we have already discussed), Edward and Sarah
Bishop, Deliverance and William Hobbs, Sarah Wilds, Mary Black, Nehe-
miah Abbott Jr., and Mary English, all of whom Abigail Hobbs had named
in her testimony. The Bishops were from Salem village and English was
from Salem town, but Esty, the Hobbs, Abbott, and the Wilds were from
Topsfield.44
Seven of the Nine Are Formally Charged
The Bishops had several strikes against them. Edward Bishop, age forty-
four, was the stepson of the above-mentioned Bridget. His wife, Sarah, age
forty-one, was the sister of the accused Sarah Wilds. Edward owned land in
Topsfield as well as in Salem village, and he had been one of the Topsfield
men who had come into conflict with Salem villagers. In 1690, Sarah had left
the Salem village church to join the church at Topsfield, and finally, in the
wake of Bridget’s hearing, Edward Bishop had the temerity, courage, or lack
of good sense to whip John Indian and to call for the same treatment of the
other afflicted persons in order to bring them back to their senses.45
Sarah Bishop was the tavern keeper to which the Reverend John Hale
referred in his testimony concerning Christian Trask. The specifics of that
story have already been reported. What most concerned Hale in its retelling
in Salem, however, were his renewed doubts about Bishop’s innocence. He
recalled how Trask had become distracted soon after she had formally
complained about Sarah Bishop, and had then taken her life, or so it
appeared at the time. Moreover, he now realized, Trask’s distraction was
much like that of the afflicted girls of Salem who had charged Sarah Bishop
with witchcraft.46
While continuing to be the subject of considerable mental anguish, Hale
reported, Trask had taken steps to reconcile with Sarah Bishop, so he had
dismissed Bishop as having had any role in Trask’s death. He concurred
with others that it must have been suicide, but the circumstances of Trask’s
death continued to trouble him. Hale explained that Trask had died of three
wounds, described as “a piece of her windpipe cut out, another wound
above that through the windpipe and gullet, and the vein they call jugular
[cut].” At the time, he questioned whether such wounds could have been
self-inflicted – that Christian Trask, “with so short a pair of scissors” as
they found near the body, could “mangle herself so without some extra-
ordinary work of the Devil of witchcraft.”47 In April 1692, he was even
more doubtful. We know little else about the Bishops’ hearing, but whatever
additional testimony – if any – was offered was enough to persuade the jury
to return Edward and Sarah Bishop to jail, from which, it was later repor-
ted, they escaped.
Deliverance and William Hobbs were the parents of “the dafter,” Abigail.
Both were characters in their daughter’s fantasies. Deliverance was brought
to court first, on April 22, and although she struggled to keep her compo-
sure, she gradually succumbed. At first, she denied the girls’ charges, but
when they rolled on the floor at her feet, she could only say, “I am amazed! I
am amazed!” whereupon, she too confessed, offering the court all they could
want of her. She began by asserting that she was among the afflicted. “Last
Lord’s Day in the meetinghouse,” she reported, “I saw a great many birds
and cats and dogs, and heard a voice say, ‘Come away.’” Thereafter, she
continued, she had seen the shapes of several people. Hobbs admitted to
having signed the Devil’s book only “the night before last” when it was
brought to her by Goody Wilds, who threatened to tear her to pieces if she
did not sign and admitted also to having participated in several acts of
maleficia.48
Like Abigail, Deliverance Hobbs named others, but only those who had
already been accused. One notable example of this will suffice. On April 22,
Hobbs identified several suspected witches, but not George Burroughs. Bur-
roughs was already under suspicion in some quarters, but he had not been
formally or publicly charged. On May 3, after news of his arrest warrant
was made public, but before he arrived in Salem, Hobbs was examined
again and this time she included Burroughs. In particular, she reported that
although in prison she had visited, spectrally, a meeting of witches and
wizards in Parris’s pasture, which included the Procters, Rebecca Nurse, the
Corys, Sarah Bishop, and George Burroughs, as their preacher. Burroughs
had exhorted those present to bewitch all in the village, “telling them they
should do it gradually, and not all at once,” but also “assuring them that
they should prevail.” Burroughs had administered the sacrament, Hobbs
continued, “using red bread and red wine like blood,” and Sarah Osburn,
Sarah Good, and Rebecca Nurse had assisted in their distribution.49
Finally, Deliverance Hobbs reported that “a man in a long-crowned white
hat” had sat next to George Burroughs during the sacramental celebration,
and that “they filled out the wine in tankards.” At one point, she continued,
Abigail Williams ran out of the nearby parsonage to speak to them, but by
the time she came anywhere near the group, Hobbs was struck blind. Thus,
Hobbs never saw with whom Williams spoke. The record of Deliverance
Hobbs’s prison examination ends with a reference to Deliverance’s daughter
being brought before her mother. Abigail was “immediately taken with a
dreadful fit,” whereupon the examiner asked Deliverance who afflicted her.
She answered, Goodman Cory: “She saw him and the gentlewoman of
Boston striving to break her daughter’s neck,” it was reported.50
William Hobbs responded quite differently from his wife and daughter.
When confronted by the girls’ uncontrollable reaction to his presence, he
insisted that he was innocent. “I can speak in the presence of God safely,
as I must look to give account another day, that I am as clear as a newborn
babe.” When Hathorne asked if he could “act witchcraft” at that moment
and by “casting” his eyes “turn folks into fits,” he answered, “You may
judge your pleasure. My soul is clear.” He denied being able to see who
was afflicting the girls, and when Hathorne asked how he could deny
responsibility for their torment, Hobbs replied, “I can deny it to my dying
day!” And he did.51
Although he admitted to not having attended church for “a pretty while,”
because he was ill, Hobbs insisted that he worshiped God only, and that he
knew nothing about witchcraft. He denied, as had been charged by his
daughter, that he left the room whenever the family read from the scrip-
tures, and that he prayed to the Devil. Hobbs testified that he had not
known his daughter was a witch and knew nothing about that to which his
wife had confessed. But the magistrates did not believe him, and they
ordered William Hobbs held as well.52
Quickly dispatched among those charged on April 21 were Sarah Wilds,
who insisted she was innocent but was condemned by several of the afflic-
ted, and Mary Black, a slave owned by Nathaniel Putnam but who lived
with his son Benjamin. There is little reason to dwell on Wilds’s hearing,53
but Black’s testimony, given her status in the community, is worth exploring
briefly.
Unlike the slave Tituba, who quickly adapted to the situation before her,
Mary Black seemed to have been confused by what had happened to her and
unable to defend herself. She stood silently when first asked if she was a
witch, but more she replied to the magistrates’s questions with, “I do not
know” or “I cannot tell”:
MAGISTRATES: How long have you been a witch?

BLACK: I cannot tell.
MAGISTRATES: But, you have been a witch?
BLACK: I cannot tell you.
MAGISTRATES: Why do you hurt these folks?
BLACK: I hurt nobody.
MAGISTRATES: Who does?
54
BLACK: I do not know.
To be sure, the girls acted against her, but so too did her master. Natha-
niel Putnam reported that “a man sat down upon the form [bench]” with
Black about one year earlier. The record does not explain what was inten-
ded by the statement, but clearly the magistrates saw it as being suspicious.
They asked Black what the man had said to her, but she replied only that he
had said nothing. Mary Black denied hurting the girls. At one point,
Hathorne asked her if she “pricked” the girls with sticks, as they had
charged, only to have Black reply, innocently and also comically, if the
stakes had not been so high, “No, I pin my neckcloth.” Hathorne directed
her to take out her neckcloth pin and put it back in. She did so, and the girls
cried out in pain as if pricked, even showing blood running from their
wounds. Black was ordered held.55
Nehemiah Abbott Jr. was brought to the bar. Mary Walcott testified that
she had seen his shape, and Ann Putnam Jr. spotted him on a beam of the
meetinghouse. The magistrates urged Abbott to confess, as his guilt “was
certainly proved,” and to “find mercy of God.” “I speak before God,” he
replied, however, “that I am clear from this accusation … in all respects.”56
At that point, another curious turn of events occurred. Ann Putnam
remained resolute in her charges, but Walcott began to waiver. “He is like
him, [but] I cannot say it is he,” she allowed. Mercy Lewis testified that
Abbott was not the person who had afflicted her, and the rest of the girls
remained silent. The magistrates ordered the girls to examine him more
closely, even moving them outside to take advantage of the daylight. But
they still could not identify him, admitting only that “he was like that man,
but [that] he had not the wen [cyst or blemish] they saw in his apparition.”
Putnam, perhaps sensing her isolation and wishing to explain her mistaken
identification, quickly shouted at Abbott, “Did you put a mist before my
eyes?”57
Nehemiah Abbott was discharged, but what happened thereafter is
unclear. Unlike Mary Esty, he may never have been charged again, but that
is not certain. In her testimony of August 25, 1692, the accused witch Sarah
Briggs remarked that she had heard “of but one innocent man imprisoned
yet for witchcraft and that was Abbott of Ipswich.” No first name is recor-
ded, but it may well have been Nehemiah. No Abbott, however, was ever
hanged during the Salem witch trials.58
The Ordeal Begins for Mary and Philip English

Also indicted on April 21 was Mary English of Salem town, the wife of the
wealthiest man in Essex County and one of the wealthiest men in New
England, clearly setting a new mark for the circle of accusers. Mary English,
born Mary Hollingsworth, could trace her ancestry to the founding of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony and to the founder of a considerable shipping
business. The Hollingsworth fortune failed after 1674, but the reversal had
little effect on Mary, who in 1675 married Philip English. In marriage, she
added to her husband’s already well-supplied estate a Hollingsworth wharf,
warehouse, and tavern.59
On the one hand, Mary English was a professor of the faith. She regularly
attended the Salem town church, was admitted to full communion in 1681,
and had her children baptized there. On the other hand, she developed a
reputation for exhibiting an aristocratic bearing toward those she considered
beneath her.60 Moreover, Mary had a very disagreeable mother, Eleanor.
Eleanor Hollingsworth is said to have come from a prominent English
family with ties to the Crown – a point, according to her fellow towns-
people, she continually flaunted. By one account, she never left home in the
evening without a servant walking before her and another behind her. But
then, the failure of the Hollingsworth fortunes in the 1670s changed all of
that. Eleanor was forced to run the family’s tavern, but she was obviously
not temperamentally suited for the job. One disgruntled customer called her
“a black-mouthed witch and a thief.” The assailant was fined for his verbal
assault, but Eleanor’s reputation survived. In 1692, she was cried out against
again as being a witch, but she had been dead for two years! Mary, how-
ever, was still very much alive.61
The warrant of April 21 ordered Mary English arrested “for high suspi-
cion of sundry acts of witchcraft done or committed … upon the bodies” of
Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, and Mary Walcott. According to a
granddaughter, the Salem town sheriff and his deputies arrived with their
arrest warrant at Mary English’s house at about 11:00 p.m., by which time
Mary and Philip had retired for the evening. When the arresting officers
entered the chamber and ordered Mary to accompany them to the local jail,
she refused, insisting that they return in the morning. The sheriff, according
to the account, reluctantly agreed but left his men to guard the house. When
he returned, Mary went with him, but only after having joined her family at
breakfast, bid farewell to her servants, and instructed Philip on the educa-
tion of their children.62
How much of this account is true we may never know, but Mary English
did appear before the magistrates on April 22. The records of her examina-
tion have been lost, but she was ordered held, and eight days later a warrant
was issued for Philip English’s arrest for afflicting the same three girls and
Abigail Williams and Susannah Sheldon.63 Philip was clearly an outsider, or,
as defined in chapter one, an intruder, as well as a prominent and repre-
sentative figure of the economic and social transformation that was over-
taking Salem in the late seventeenth century.
Philip English – his name an anglicization of the French L’Anglais – was
born on the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel. The date and circum-
stances of his arrival in Salem are unclear, but by the time he married he had
become a successful independent shipmaster with business connections
throughout the British colonies in the Western Hemisphere and in Europe.
His marriage to Mary Hollingsworth added to his fortune, so by 1692 he
was believed to be the richest man “on the coast.” He and Mary lived in
what was commonly called English’s “great house.” It was the largest and
most opulent in Salem, and it was staffed by fifteen to twenty servants.64
If Mary was universally called “haughty,” Philip English received mixed
reviews as a person. He was variously described as “high-spirited” and
“impulsive” but “not ungenerous,” and “at times choleric” and “not overly
conciliatory to his peers” but “kind to the poor.”65 Perhaps his best-known
but irritating quality, however, was his litigiousness. Already soundly con-
demned by those who mourned the loss of community it signalled, liti-
giousness was on the rise in Salem, especially among those in the business
community. In 1683, out of 556 men listed as taxpayers in the town of
Salem, 62 were involved in court cases. Of a sample of 506 men who
appeared in court in the twenty-year period from 1672 to 1692, 357 appeared
an average of four times and 216 of that number were always plaintiffs.
Philip English was in court seventeen times, usually as a plaintiff.66
By 1692, there were over two dozen families with husbands of Jersey
extraction in Salem. Philip English was not only the most prominent among
them, but he was also responsible for many of their passages to Salem,
having arranged their indenture. They tended to live apart from the local
populace, several residing on Philip English’s land, and they were seen as
“rapacious swindlers” or as acting in collusion against the rest of the com-
munity. Animosity between the Jerseyans and the English Salemites peaked
in the years immediately preceding the witch trials, when there was a sudden
influx of French Huguenots and renewed war with France. The Huguenots,
French Protestants, began to arrive in 1686 with France’s revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed their religious freedom, and the
much-despised Governor Edmund Andros welcomed them and accorded
them the rights of British citizenship.67
In 1689, when King William’s War began, however, tensions in the British
colonies of New England led to a growing fear of those of French extraction
in their midst. In 1690, in one particularly incendiary incident, Jerseyan
Isaac Morrill was accused of plotting the overthrow of British rule in New
England with the help of other Jerseyans, 500 Indians, 300 French troops,
and a French fleet. In October 1692, in the midst of the Salem witch trials,
the Massachusetts General Court proposed that armed parties be used to
search all French communities within their borders for powder and arms
and that an oath of allegiance be required of those people. As part of the
measure the legislature resolved that “sundry” of the French who lived in the
region were “enemies to their majesties and the weal of the province.”68
Not surprisingly, then, several Jerseyans became the victims of the hysteria
of 1692, but indirectly. Most Jersey men were not charged, but their English
wives were. The native Salem women who married them may have been life-
long members of the community and therefore insiders, but their actions had
caused their loyalties to be suspect and then to be even more distrusted, feared,
or hated than their husbands. Among those women to be charged with witch-
craft were Mary De Rich, Mary De Riels, Mrs. Zachariah White (Le Blanc),
and Mary English.69
Philip English was Anglican. He regularly attended services in Salem’s
First Church with Mary, and he agreed to have his children baptized there.
He joined other leading citizens in supporting the construction of a larger
structure, and he seemed to have stayed out of any open conflict that may
have resulted from his religious preferences, at least until after 1692. But
Philip English was definitely not a Puritan, and he never made any attempt
to become one.70
Finally, Philip English, the successful man of commerce, the man of many
lawsuits, the outsider, and the Anglican, became even more vulnerable when
he entered politics. Despite his shortcomings, he was highly regarded in
Salem’s commercial circle, which was beginning to dominate town politics,
and not surprisingly English allied himself politically with the Porter faction.
He held various town offices and, perhaps not coincidentally, on March 8,
1692, less than two months before his wife’s arrest, he and four other Porter
kinsmen were elected town selectmen. The election, the reader will recall,
was of considerable importance in the struggle between the Porters and the
Putnams.71
In a document attached to the April 30 arrest warrant, Susannah Sheldon
testified that while attending a service in the town church on Sunday, April
24, “being afflicted in a very sad manner,” Philip English’s specter stepped
over his pew and pinched her. Later, when Sheldon was returning home,
Philip English and “a black man with a high crowned hat on his head”
approached her, the latter with a book in hand. Philip English told Sheldon
that his companion was her God and that if she would touch the book
English would not pinch her anymore, nor would anyone else. The next day,
she continued, English appeared to her again, this time threatening to kill
her if she did not sign the book. In both instances, Sheldon refused.72
Philip English had been visiting Mary in jail, but when a warrant was
issued for his arrest, he disappeared. On May 2, Essex County Marshall
George Herrick reported that English had fled. Guessing that he might have
gone to Boston where his wife was being held and where he had influential
friends, the magistrates on May 6 procured a second warrant for his arrest
in that city, where he was apprehended. Philip English was returned to
Salem on May 30, and he appeared before the magistrates the next day, but
the records of Philip English’s examination have disappeared.73
In the meantime, the case against the Englishes grew worse. On May 12, a
further complaint was made against Mary English for afflicting the same
girls noted above and others from Salem village. On May 23, Susannah
Sheldon testified that a dead man, Joseph Rabson, had appeared to her, told
her that Philip English had murdered him by drowning him at sea, and ordered
her to convey that information to Magistrate Hathorne. English’s specter,
however, warned Sheldon that if she did so he would cut off her legs, and that if
he were to be arrested, he would “kill ten folks in Boston before the next six
days,” as well as the governor, whom he called his “greatest enemy.”74
On June 1, it will be recalled, Mary English was among those who testi-
fied that Mary Warren had confessed to lying in court. On June 2, the girls
struck back. In one complaint, Susannah Sheldon reported that Mary Eng-
lish had appeared to her with Bridget Bishop and Giles Cory, and that
English had “a yellow bird in her bosom.” When Sheldon refused to touch
the book Bishop offered her, English joined the others in biting her. The
next day Cory and Mary English returned, and following a similar con-
frontation, Philip English appeared as well. He too urged Sheldon to touch
the book, and when she refused, he bit her. And, finally, that night, Mary
English, Giles and Martha Cory, and Bridget Bishop visited Sheldon yet
again, for the same purpose, but on this occasion English told Sheldon that
she had been a witch for twenty years, a point confirmed by the “black
man” in attendance.75
Just as damaging was the testimony of William Beale. On August 2, 1692,
Beale testified before an Essex County grand jury that in March 1691, while
he lay sick in bed, Philip English had appeared to him. The next day, his son
James, who had been recovering from smallpox, complained of a pain in his
side and died. At that same hour, the previous January 23, another of
Beale’s sons had died of “a stopping in his throat”; he too had been reco-
vering from smallpox.76 What Beale intended by this testimony requires
some explanation.
On January 12, 1693, Beale appeared before a grand jury to explain the
circumstances of his first meeting with Philip English. He explained that in
1690 English had asked Beale to show him the boundaries of English’s land
in Marblehead. Beale told English he knew nothing about his land, but
English insisted he did and offered to pay him “a piece of eight” and part of
nearby land owned by Richard Reede for his services. Beale refused and,
suspecting that English’s proposal was part of a plan to defraud Reede of his
land, said he would testify against English if called. English called Beale a liar
and an argument ensued. That fall, Philip English had Richard Reede arrested
in a dispute over the same piece of land. Beale set out to tell Reede’s son of his
earlier encounter with English, but while passing through Lynn he had a mas-
sive nosebleed that continued until he arrived in Marblehead.77
Further testimony against Philip and Mary English was offered, but by
early August the Englishes took matters into their own hands. Due to their
station in life, it is said, while in the Boston jail they were given certain
privileges, including permission to leave the jail upon occasion, as long as
they returned at an appointed hour. One Sunday, on the eve of their return
to Salem for trial, the Englishes attended a service at Boston’s First
Church, led by the Reverend Joshua Moody. Moody, a critic of the Salem
witch trials, chose as his text Matthew 10:23: “If they persecute you in one
city, flee to another.” Following the service, Moody and his associate
Samuel Willard visited the Englishes in prison to impress upon them the
meaning of Moody’s sermon. According to the English’s granddaughter,
Philip English resisted their entreaties, but his wife did not. She is said to
have told him, “Do you not think the sufferers innocent? Why may not we
suffer also?” Mary had contracted consumption (tuberculosis) during her
ordeal, and when Moody and Willard urged him to escape for her sake,
Philip finally agreed.78
Legend has it that Philip and Mary English were assisted in their escape
by Moody and Willard, as well as by Governor Phips of Massachusetts and
Governor Fletcher of New York. There is no proof of such collusion, but
the Englishes did flee to New York City, where they were joined by other
escapees. Once again, an unconfirmed account offers that at one point the
Englishes sent a ship with 100 barrels of flour or corn to Salem to feed those
who were starving because of the disruption the witch trials had caused in
planting and harvesting.79 It is not legend, however, that Massachusetts
officials made no attempt to extradite the Englishes, a point to which we
will return momentarily.
The “Black Minister” Is Apprehended

Perhaps the most important person to be formally charged during the Salem
witch trials was George Burroughs, who became known as the “black min-
ister.” References to the “black minister” appear in the earliest records of
the Salem witch trials, usually in the context of the witches’ Sabbath.
According to testimony of the afflicted girls and confessions of several of the
accused, the “black minister” led meetings of witches and wizards in the
Reverend Parris’s pasture.
Witnesses reported that at midnight a horn was sounded from Parris’s pas-
ture, which although inaudible to most, summoned witches from near and far.
They arrived on foot or through the air on brooms, whereupon the ceremony
began. The diabolical rites performed in seventeenth-century New England
were far less dramatic than those reported to have occurred in Europe, but they
nonetheless horrified local residents. Dedicated to the Devil, participants sat in
an orderly fashion, reminiscent of seating arrangements in the meetinghouse.
They partook of communion, the bread being red and the wine being real
blood. They listened to a sermon in which the “black minister” exhorted them
to bring others to the Devil. He promised them wealth, power, and other
worldly pleasures, as well as release from the rigid confines and perceived
intolerance that marked the Puritan community.80 But who was the “black
minister” that did the Devil’s bidding and around whom the witches and
wizards rallied? And was it possible to put an end to the entire affair without
his apprehension? No, he had to be found.
Clues about the “black minister’s” identity were gathered from the
record, but the major break in the case came on August 3, when Ann
Putnam Jr. reported that on April 20 she saw him gathering his flock in the
Reverend Parris’s pasture. In her father’s presence, and that of others, she
cried, “Oh dreadful, dreadful! Here is a minister come! What, are ministers
witches too? Whence dreadful here is a minister come. What is your name
for I will complain of you, though you be a minister?”81
Ann did not recognize the minister, so she questioned him: “Oh dreadful,
tell me your name that I may know who you are.” At first he avoided the
question, tortured her, and pressed her to write in his book, but when Ann
persisted, he gave her not only his name but a list of his crimes! It was
George Burroughs, and he told her that he had had three wives, that he
had bewitched the first two to death, and that he had killed Deodat Law-
son’s wife because she was unwilling to leave Salem village. He also
admitted to having killed Lawson’s child because Lawson had gone “east-
ward” to preach to the soldiers. Burroughs confessed to having “bewitched
a great many soldiers to death at the eastward,” meaning the frontier
where the British colonists were gathered to fight the French and Indians.
And, finally, Putnam reported that Burroughs had told her that he had
made Abigail Hobbs and several others witches, and that “he was above a
witch. He was a conjurer.”82
The identification, though surprising to most and clearly of major import,
was perhaps not entirely unexpected. In the quarrel over the ministers of
Salem village, the Putnams and George Burroughs had not been on the best of
terms. Burroughs and his family had lived for some time with John Putnam
and his family while the parsonage was being repaired. They carefully wat-
ched Burroughs’s every move and made their failings well-known to the
village. They gossiped about his supposed mistreatment of his wife, his con-
demnation of her harmless gossiping, and his refusal to allow her to write to
her family. When, within a year of his arrival in Salem village, Mrs. Bur-
roughs died, the Putnams blamed her death on George’s severe treatment of
her. And, as already noted, upon Burroughs’s leaving Salem but being forcibly
returned, John Putnam had him jailed for a debt Burroughs had incurred as
part of his wife’s funeral.83
On April 21, Thomas Putnam, Ann’s father, wrote a note to the magis-
trates in response to something he had heard. He began with “humble and
hearty thanks” for “the great care and pains” that the magistrates had taken
in the hearings thus far, for which the people of Salem would never be able
to repay them, but for which they would receive recompense from “the Lord
God of Israel,” whose cause and interest they had espoused. “Beholding
continually the tremendous works of Divine Providence,” Putnam con-
tinued, he deemed it his duty to inform the magistrates of something he
believed they had not heard, of something “high and dreadful,” of “a wheel
within a wheel at which our ears do tingle.” He did not elaborate, perhaps
preferring to reveal the details in person.84
What Thomas Putnam apparently did not know was that Ann had
already named George Burroughs. On April 20, standing just outside Inger-
soll’s ordinary, Ann had told Benjamin Hutchinson that she saw Burroughs
or, as she put it, the “little black minister that lived at Casco Bay.” She told
Hutchinson of Burroughs’s amazing feats of strength, called him a wizard,
and reported that he “had killed three wives, two for himself and one for
Mr. Lawson.” Hutchinson asked where she saw Burroughs, and Ann poin-
ted to a rut in the road nearby. Hutchinson threw a pitchfork at the spot,
whereupon she fell into a fit, but when she came out of it, she reported that
she had heard the pitchfork tear Burroughs’s coat.85
When Ann entered the ordinary where people were gathering for a Lec-
ture Day Sermon, she spotted Burroughs again, and this time Hutchinson
struck at the spot with his rapier. Ann reported that the specter disappeared,
but that a gray cat had taken its place. Hutchinson struck once again and
Ann fell into a fit, but when she recovered she reported that he had killed
the cat, whereupon the specter of Sarah Good had carried it away. The
Lecture Day service continued without interruption, but upon its completion
the room filled with specters flying in through the windows “as thick as
horseflies.” Ann saw Hobbs among the spectral visitors, as well as an uni-
dentified Indian. Eleazer Putnam joined Hutchinson in the fight to ward off
the specters, and between them they killed three, including “a great black
woman of Stonington and an Indian who came with her.” The floor ran red
with blood, the girls reported, although only they could see it, and the witches
quickly removed the bodies of the dead, assembling outside of the ordinary to
mourn their losses.86
Still the magistrates held back. It was no mean thing to arrest a minister,
a man of God, as the leader of witches and the servant of the Devil. But
then the revelations of Ann Putnam were quickly followed by the confes-
sions of some of the most recently accused witches, including Deliverance
and Abigail Hobbs. Although she had not identified him earlier, magis-
trates went to Deliverance to see if she could see what the girls had
witnessed, and she concurred. She too saw the small “black minister”
presiding over the witches’ Sabbath. George Burroughs was indeed the
man they sought.87
Because Burroughs lived in Maine, then still part of Massachusetts, steps
toward his arrest had to be taken in Boston. Upon the request of the Salem
magistrates, Boston magistrate Elisha Hutchinson issued a warrant for Bur-
roughs’s arrest. He addressed it to John Partridge of Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, Field Marshall of the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine.
It was dated April 30, and it included the order to arrest George Burroughs
for having been “suspected of a confederacy with the Devil.” Partridge was
directed to deliver him to the custody of the marshal of Essex County, or
directly to the Salem magistrates.88
Soon thereafter, while Burroughs and his wife were at home dining,
it was reported, men bearing the summons burst into the house and
took him into custody. He had time neither to finish his meal nor pack
his belongings. The charges may not have been totally clear either, but
the Burroughs no doubt knew enough about what was happening in
Salem to fear the worst. In fact, when the third Mrs. Burroughs learned
specifically what had happened, she took everything of value in the
house, found a buyer for George’s books, and lent the money for
interest. Then she took her own daughter and left, leaving George’s
children by his earlier marriages, the eldest of whom was seventeen, to
fend for themselves.89
Partridge returned Burroughs to Salem on May 4, but he was not exam-
ined until May 8. Burroughs was held in a room in the house of Thomas
Beadle, where he received visitors. In Salem town, at least, he had some
defenders. One was Captain Daniel King, who urged his friend Elizur
Keyser to visit Burroughs. “If you are a Christian,” King said, “go see
him … I believe he is a child of God, a choice child of God, and that God
will clear his innocency.” Keyser did not share in King’s confidence in Bur-
roughs, but he agreed to visit him anyway. Once in Burroughs’s company,
he later testified, Keyser was bothered by the minister’s fixed stare and by
the spell of his “evil eye,” and not surprisingly, he later began to have
visions. He saw “something like jelly” in his chimney that did “quaver with
a strange motion” and a light “about the bigness of my hand.” Keyser
summoned his maid, who saw it as well, but his wife could see nothing.
Keyser was convinced it was Burroughs’s doing.90
On the evening of May 5, Ann Putnam, in the presence of her father and
her Uncle Edward, had yet another vision of George Burroughs. Once again,
he tortured her and urged her to write in his book. In this instance, how-
ever, Burroughs told Putnam that his first two wives would appear to her
and tell her “a great many lies,” but that she was not to believe them. The
wives did appear “in winding sheets, and napkins about their heads.” They
faced Burroughs, “looked very red and angry,” and told him that “he had
been a cruel man to them, and that their blood did cry for vengeance against
him.” When they announced that they should be “clothed with white robes
in heaven, when he should be cast into hell,” he vanished.91
The two women turned toward Putnam and provided further details on
what Burroughs had told Putnam on April 20. They confirmed that Bur-
roughs had murdered them. The first wife announced that while she lived in
the Salem village parsonage he had stabbed her under the left arm and put a
piece of sealing wax on the wound. The second wife offered that Burroughs
had killed her aboard a vessel as she was coming from Maine to see her
friends. Both told Putnam to tell the magistrates in Burroughs’s presence
what she had learned from them, and if he denied the charges they would
reappear. Later, Putnam added, Deodat Lawson’s wife and her daughter
appeared, telling her that Burroughs had murdered them, as did a woman
who identified herself as Goodman Fuller’s first wife. She reported that
Burroughs had killed her “because there was some difference between her
husband and him.”92
Given his elevated position, on May 9 Burroughs was granted a pre-
liminary hearing with Hathorne and Corwin, as well as magistrates William
Stoughton of Dorchester and Samuel Sewall of Boston, who had come to
Salem especially for Burroughs’s hearing. They solicited from Burroughs
some damaging admissions. They found him not entirely sound in doctrine
on some points not connected with witchcraft, but certainly part of his
calling to the ministry. He admitted that he had attended communion ser-
vice on only one or two occasions recently, even though he remained a
member of the Roxbury Church, and that only his eldest of eight children
had been baptized.93
When Burroughs appeared before the afflicted girls, they shrieked in terror
and fell to the floor where they were so tortured the magistrates ordered
their removal. “It is an amazing and humbling providence,” Burroughs
responded, when Stoughton asked for his assessment of the affair, “but I
understand nothing of it.” He nevertheless denied the specific allegations
that had been made against him. His house on Casco Bay had not been
haunted, for example, although it was surrounded by toads. (Toads were
widely held to be capable of diabolical affliction. They were mentioned in
the Book of Revelation as coming from the mouth of the Apocalyptic Beast,
and they were known to inhabit the Reverend Parris’s pasture where wit-
ches’ Sabbaths, it was reported, had been held.) His family had not been
“affrighted” in their house by a white calf, as had been alleged, and he had
not forbidden any of his wives to write to their parents. He denied having
killed his first two wives, or even having abused them in any way. And
when the ministers had him bodily searched for the Devil’s mark, they could
find none.94
Adding to the negative side of the ledger of evidence in the Burroughs
case, however, Mary Webber, of Casco Bay, testified that as Burroughs’s
neighbor in the mid-1680s his second wife had informed her about “much of
her husband’s unkindness to her.” She had pleaded with Webber to write to
her father to apprise him of the situation, because Burroughs had forbidden
her to write to him. Hannah Harris, who lived with the Burroughs in
Maine, reported that Burroughs had often scolded his third wife, and once
when she was ill, he held her in an open doorway exposing her to the elements
until she nearly died.95
Ann Putnam dutifully reported what she had been told on May 5 by her
spectral visitors, and much as they had promised, when Burroughs denied
the story the specters of Burroughs’s first two wives flew into the room to
corroborate her testimony. Susannah Sheldon at least saw them, and per-
haps Ann Putnam, but she fell into convulsions and had to be taken from the
room. Abigail Williams’s reference to George Burroughs’s great strength was
recalled on April 21. Burroughs’s strength was legendary, and in friendlier
times he had taken some pride in the various physical feats attributed to him.
At this point, however, the stories he heard were greatly exaggerated. One
eyewitness, Thomas Greenslit, attested to Burroughs having lifted a “gun of
six-foot barrel” with one finger stuck in the muzzle and a barrel of molasses
above his head with only two! It was implied that Burroughs’s great strength
was made possible by his collusion with the Devil.96
There were witnesses to strange, perhaps occult, happenings associated
with Burroughs. As part of her testimony, Casco Bay neighbor Mary
Webber recalled Burroughs’s wife telling her about a strange noise that had
awakened her and her husband one night. George and a slave had pursued
the specter, Mrs. Burroughs told Webber, and when they reached the bottom of
the stairs it had taken on the appearance of a white calf. (Burroughs denied the
appearance of the white calf during his private hearing with the magistrates.)
On another occasion, Burroughs’s wife reported to Webber that an invisible
spirit had come into her bedroom and breathed on her. Struck with fear, she
had tried to awaken her husband but could not rouse him until the visitor had
left. Webber was suggesting, of course, that George Burroughs was responsible
for those strange occurrences, an implication made worse by testimony to his
having led the witches of Salem.97
Mercy Lewis was a particularly damaging witness. At age fourteen, upon
the murder of her parents by Indians, Burroughs and his first wife had taken
her into their home in Maine. They brought her to Salem but left her with
Thomas Putnam when they moved away. Lewis had taken close mental
notes of what went on in the Burroughs’s household, and she was prepared
to report it, or at least on her version of what had happened. Burroughs had
admitted to Lewis, she had testified, that he could raise the Devil, and that
he had bewitched people. When she asked him how he could bewitch people
at such great distances (Maine to Salem), he told her the Devil was his ser-
vant, and that he had sent the Devil in his shape to do it. Burroughs had
taken Lewis to his study and asked her to sign a “new fashion” book, and
when she refused, Burroughs, much like Satan to Christ, had taken Lewis to
a mountaintop and tempted her by showing her the kingdoms of the earth,
threatening to throw her from the mountaintop if she should continue to
refuse. Burroughs denied having done any such thing, but it meant little.98
The other girls reported that although he had failed with them, he had
boasted of converting several in the area to the Devil’s cause. Abigail Hobbs
and Mary Warren were brought forth to testify. They identified Burroughs
as being the man who was leading the witches’ Sabbath in Parris’s pasture.
It was this “black minister,” Warren explained, who gave the blast on the
spectral trumpet at midnight that summoned the witches. It was Burroughs
who preached at the meeting and “pressed them to bewitch all the village,”
and it was he who assured those gathered that they would prevail.99
What else need be said? The charging and subsequent conviction of the
Reverend Burroughs was a pivotal moment in the proceedings. The leader
of the Devil’s disciples had been found, and he was sent off to prison with
those he had led. A minister in whom the people of New England had
placed their faith as their primary defender against the Devil turned out to
be the Devil’s follower. What hope remained for those faithful to God’s
word?100
Emerson Baker has pointed out that four additional ministers, whose
orthodoxy could be questioned, and fifteen of all five ministers’ family
members, were subsequently cried out upon after Burroughs was charged,
perhaps identifying an overlooked pattern of accusations initiated by Bur-
roughs’s arrest. None of the four ministers were ever charged. Warrants
were issued for only five of the twenty, and only two – Burroughs and
Abigail Dane Faulkner – faced the Court of Oyer and Terminer and were
convicted.101
Dorcas Hoar Is Jailed

Before concluding this chapter, we might pause briefly to consider the case
of still another person subjected to an arrest warrant on April 30. The
reader will recall our earlier discussion of Dorcas Hoar and her brush with
the law in Beverly, where largely through the good graces of the Reverend
John Hale she had been able to avoid being charged with witchcraft. Much
as Hale had been drawn into the crisis at Salem, so too had Hoar, but Hoar
was brought to the village under arrest. Upon her appearance before the
Salem magistrates on May 2, the girls immediately fell into fits. Elizabeth
Hubbard cried out that Hoar was pinching her and displayed the wounds,
whereupon Mary Walcott, Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr. and Susannah
Sheldon made similar complaints. Hathorne demanded to know why Hoar
hurt the girls, whereupon she answered that she had never hurt any child in
her life. When Hathorne responded that if it was not her it was her
“appearance,” she pleaded, “How can I help it?”102
Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam charged Hoar with having choked a
woman in Boston, and according to the records, a chorus of voices accused
her of having killed her husband. But when Williams, Susannah Sheldon,
and Mary Walcott exclaimed that they saw a “black man” whispering in her
ear, Hoar shot back, “Oh, you are liars, and God will stop the mouths of
liars!” The magistrates were outraged at Hoar’s outburst. They ordered her
not to speak in such a manner in court, but she persisted, “I will speak the
truth as long as I live.” How long Dorcas Hoar was to live, however, was
about to be decided. She too was sent to jail.103
Notes
Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 63.
3 Sidney Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, MA: Sidney Perley,
1924), 200; Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, The Social
Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 201.
The Procters are also referred to as the Proctors in some accounts.
4 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 201; Charles Upham, Salem Witch-
craft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 305–306.
5 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 63; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, ed.
Bernard Rosenthal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 538.
9 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 170–171, 537; Gragg, The Salem Witch
Crisis, 78.
10 The reader will recall that on April 11 the deputy governor and members of the
General Court attended the Salem Town hearings. Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
II: 107; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 173–175.
11 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 173; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts,
93; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 107–109.
12 Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700), in George Lincoln
Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 347.
14 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 173–174; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II:
109–110.
15 See for example, Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 307, 304–305, 309, 315–
317, 323, 539, 906, 327, 347–348, 486, 310–312; Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
II: 207–208.
22 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 99; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 118;
Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American
Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 22.
23 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 196–197; Starkey, The Devil in Massachu-
setts, 99; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 118–119.
24 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 99–100; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II:
118–119; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 355–356.
32 David L. Greene, “Salem Witches I: Bridget Bishop,” American Genealogist, 57
(July 1981): 129–138; David L. Greene, “Bridget Bishop Conviction,” American
Genealogist, 58 (July 1982): 163.
33 Greene, “Salem Witches I,” 129–130.
34 Greene, “Salem Witches I,” 100, 129–130.
35 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Doc-
umentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England (Boston, MA:
Boston University Press, 1993), 157–158.
36 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 162.
37 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 183–184, see also 185–186. Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II: 124–125.
40 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 108; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 124.
41 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 124–125; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 189–193;
Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 23.
43 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 198–199; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 129–
130; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 109; Mary Beth Norton, In the
Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: W. W. Norton,
2002), 79–81; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 23.
44 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 109. Wilds is also referred to as Wildes in
other sources.
45 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 135–136; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts,
109.
setts, 110.
163.
132.
133.
136–137; Candy, another slave from Barbados owned by Margaret Hawkes of
Salem, was later charged. On July 4, she confessed and named others.
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 463–464, 752–753. Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
II: 208, 215.
56 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 121, note 40; Records of the Salem Witch-
Hunt, 200–201, 287–288, 205–206; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 134.
57 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 287, 290; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 135.
58 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 553; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 121,
notes 40, 42; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 133–134.
59 Bryan F. Le Beau, “Philip English and the Witchcraft Hysteria,” Historical
Journal of Massachusetts, 15 (January 1987): 1; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds.,
The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of
the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977),
I: 16.
60 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 1.
61 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 11; William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley
(reprint, Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962), II: 23, 82; Perley, The History of
Salem, II: 90.
62 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 200–201; Bentley, The Diary, II: 22–26.
63 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 219, 221, 223.
64 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 1; Bentley, The Diary, I: 248; II: 26; Perley, The
History of Salem, II: 355; III: 70; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 142.
65 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 11; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 143.
66 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 13; David T. Konig, Law and Society in Puritan
Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629–1692 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of
North Carolina Press, 1979), xi, 154–156.
67 David T. Konig, “A New Look at the Essex ‘French’: Ethnic Frictions and
Community Tensions in Seventeenth Century Essex County, Massachusetts,”
Essex Institute Historical Collections, 110 (July 1974): 169–174, 177; Le Beau,
“Philip English,” 12.
68 Konig, “A New Look,” 178–180.
70 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 10–11.
71 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 1–2; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 132.
72 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 278–280; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 2–3; W.
Elliot Woodward, ed., Records of Salem Witchcraft Copied from the Original
Documents (1864; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), I: 189, 191–192.
74 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 264, 300.
75 Woodward, ed., Records of Salem, I: 168–169.
76 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 318–319; Records
of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 499–500, 775; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 4.
77 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 318–319; Records
of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 499–500, 775; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 4.
78 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 309; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 5.
79 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 242; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 5; Bentley, The
Diary, II: 24.
83 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 125; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt,
246–247.
140.
85 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 505–506; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 151;
Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 129.
86 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 119; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 151–
152; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 505–506.
87 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 505–506, 210–213, 220.
91 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 244–245. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 154–155.
92 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 245–246, 505–506; see also: Boyer and Nis-
senbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers, I: 166–167. Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, I: 155.
94 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 240–242, 517–518; Starkey, The Devil in
Massachusetts, 116.
96 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 646–647, 247–248, 244–245. Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II: 159.
100 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 127; Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading
the Witch Trials of 1692 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 130–135;
Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 149–154, 245–251.
101 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 137–138.
102 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 225–227; Upham, Salem Witchcraft: II: 144.
6 “God Will Deliver Us Out of the
Hands of Unmerciful Men”
The actual Salem witch trials began in May 1692, and we will turn to those
trials in the next chapter. Before doing so, however, we will spend one last
chapter on the preliminary hearings, about which we know much more
(because the trial records have disappeared). We will select from those that
remain the hearings which either more fully develop themes introduced in
previous chapters or provide an additional dimension to what we have
learned so far. The cases discussed in this chapter will include three other
individuals who at first supported and then turned against the witch-hunt
and paid a dear price; three cases of prominent figures who were charged,
two of whom escaped; and the single largest group of witchcraft charges
outside of Salem, namely those of Andover, Massachusetts.
The Case of George Jacobs Sr.

In the previous chapter, we discussed the case of Mary Warren, whose
second thoughts concerning her role in the Salem witch trials exposed her to
the wrath of her young compatriots. We shall now turn to the cases of Sarah
Churchill, another member of the accusing circle who tried to pull back, and
Margaret Jacobs, who confessed to being a witch and, in the process, condemned
her own grandfather, only to seek forgiveness in the end. Both cases involve the
bringing of charges against George Jacobs Sr.
By 1692, George Jacobs had lived in Salem for over thirty years, most
recently on a moderate-sized farm about two miles south of the Salem vil-
lage meetinghouse. He was eighty years old, and he walked on two staffs,
but he nevertheless continued to cut an imposing figure. Jacobs was
uncommonly tall and wore his white hair long, perhaps reminding some,
one historian has commented, of the “man in a long-crowned white hat” to
whom Deliverance Hobbs had referred in her testimony.1
Age had not diminished George Jacobs’s formidable reputation. He was
widely known in Salem village as a tough, quick-tempered man who had
been involved in a number of public quarrels and even physical confronta-
tions. In 1677, for example, he landed in court for physically attacking John
Thompkins. Witnesses testified that he simply lost control of himself and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-7
140 “God Will Deliver Us Out of the Hands of Unmerciful Men”
struck Thompkins and would have done so repeatedly if he had not been
restrained.2
A warrant was issued for George Jacobs’s arrest on May 10, 1692. He
was immediately taken to Thomas Beadle’s ordinary in Salem town for
examination. Things did not go well for Jacobs from the start. Prior to his
hearing, Sheriff George Herrick and Constable Joseph Neale examined
Jacobs and found a witch’s teat under his right shoulder, “about a quarter
of an inch long or better with a sharp point drooping downwards.” Herrick
thrust a pin into the growth and noted that Jacobs was “not in the least
sensible” to it. Further, “there was neither water, blood, nor corruption, nor
any other matter” in the growth.3
When Jacobs entered the hearing room, he did not do so meekly. When
told of his accusers, he said, “Well, let us hear who they are and what are
they.” When Abigail Williams was presented, identified him, and fell into a
fit, Jacobs laughed and exclaimed that he had been falsely accused. “Do you
think this is true?” he asked the magistrates, and when they asked him who
he thought was responsible for the girl’s affliction, he replied, “I never did
it … Don’t ask me.”4
Prominent among George Jacobs’s accusers was Sarah Churchill, his servant.
Standing before the court, Churchill testified that the night before Jacobs had
afflicted her while she was at Ingersoll’s ordinary. Perhaps sensing the damage
the testimony of someone so close to him might cause, Jacobs appealed to the
magistrates, “Pray, do not accuse me. I am clear as your worships; you must do
right judgments.” But the magistrates persisted, even leading Churchill in her
testimony.5
“What book did he bring you, Sarah?” the magistrates asked, drawing on
an earlier deposition. “Did he not appear on the other side of the river and
hurt you?” “Yes, he did,” Churchill responded, whereupon the magistrates
turned to Jacobs and again pressed him to respond. “What would you have
me say? I never wronged no man in word nor deed,” to which he added,
“You tax me for a wizard, you may as well tax me for a buzzard. I have
done no harm.” When the magistrates asked Jacobs how he would explain
the appearance of Churchill’s afflicter in his shape, he, as others before him,
suggested that the Devil could take any likeness. The magistrates countered
that the Devil could not do so without a person’s consent, but Jacobs did
not pursue the matter. All he said was that with which he had been charged
was untrue: “I am as innocent as the child born tonight.”6
Churchill charged Jacobs with having lived “a wicked life,” offering testi-
mony that only one who had lived with him, if only as a servant, could offer.
She testified that Jacobs only prayed when he was alone and never with his
family, and that he had pressured his son, George Jacobs Jr., and his grand-
daughter, Margaret (George Jr.’s daughter), into signing the book. The elder
Jacobs explained that he did not pray with his family because he could not
read, but that he did pray. When the magistrates ordered him to repeat the
Lord’s Prayer, however, he repeatedly stumbled his way through it.
“God Will Deliver Us Out of the Hands of Unmerciful Men” 141
Jacobs’s hearing was extended into the next day, May 11, at which time
Ann Putnam Jr. and Abigail Williams charged him with hurting them and
showed the magistrates their hands with pins stuck in them. Mary Walcott
testified that he had beaten her with one of his staves, and Putnam reported
that Jacobs had told her that he had been a witch for forty years.7 His fate
was sealed. George Jacobs Sr. was sent to prison, but problems soon arose
for the prosecution due to the second thoughts of Sarah Churchill and to his
granddaughter’s recantation.
In a deposition sent to the magistrates after Jacobs’s hearing, Sarah Ingersoll
reported that Churchill had come to her “crying and wringing her hands, see-
mingly to be much troubled in spirit.” When Ingersoll asked what troubled her,
she answered that she had “undone herself … in belying herself and others in
saying that she had set her hand to the Devil’s book, whereas … she never did.”
When Ingersoll asked why she had lied, Churchill answered that she had done
so “because they threatened her and told her they would put her into the
dungeon … along with Mr. Burroughs.”8
Ingersoll reported that Churchill had repeated the confession several times
and that when she asked Churchill why she still would not admit her error,
she explained that she simply had “stood out so long in it” that she dared
not stop. She also added, tellingly, that she had not attempted to clear the
record because “if she told Mr. Noyes [Salem town minister] but once she
had set her hand to the book he would believe her; but if she told the truth,
and said she had not set her hand to the book a hundred times, he would
not believe her.” The deposition was endorsed by Ann Andrews, Jacobs’s
daughter.9
On the one hand, the deposition did not explicitly state that Sarah
Churchill had admitted to having lied in her testimony against Jacobs. It did
report, however, that more than once she had spoken of “belying herself and
others,” and such an admission in ordinary circumstances would certainly
cast a shadow on the entirety of her testimony. The magistrates, however,
did nothing about it, and Jacobs remained in jail. Further, although it was
clear Churchill had felt remorse for her role in condemning her master and
others, much as had happened to Mary Warren, the girls had threatened
her, and the authorities were unsympathetic. She would go no further in her
recantation, and she would live to testify another day.
Margaret, George Jacobs’s granddaughter, had been named in the May 10
arrest warrant and examined as well. Her records have not survived, how-
ever, so we know little about her hearing except that she confessed and, in
the process, condemned her grandfather and George Burroughs. In August,
after both had been tried and condemned to execution, however, she
recanted both about her own guilt and about those against whom she had
testified. She explained that a combination of fear and bewilderment at the
accusations made against her, intimidation by the magistrates, and a des-
perate hope to save her life and gain her freedom had led her to falsely
incriminate them.10
“The Lord above knows I knew nothing, in the least measure, how or
who afflicted them,” she admitted, but the magistrates had told her that if
she did not confess, she would be jailed and hanged. If she did, she would
save her life. So, she confessed. It was “altogether false and untrue,” how-
ever, she continued, and that very night she had been “in such horror of
conscience” that she could not sleep, “for fear the Devil should carry me
away, for telling such horrid lies.” Thus, her recantation. “What I said was
altogether false against my grandfather and Mr. Burroughs,” she wrote.
Further, she was not guilty “in the least measure of the crime of witchcraft,
nor any other sin that deserves death from man.” Margaret sought and
received the forgiveness of her grandfather and George Burroughs. Jacobs
soon added Margaret to his will, leaving her ten pounds in silver. Burroughs
went so far as to pray with her and for her, but even Margaret’s recantation
did not alter their fate.11
On August 20, the day after her grandfather was executed, Margaret
wrote a letter to her father once again asserting that her confession had been
“contrary to [her] conscience and knowledge” and “wounding of [her] soul.”
She wrote of “the terrors of a wounded conscience” she bore, relief from
which she prayed to God. She noted that the magistrates had not believed
her recantation, and that she expected soon to be put to death as well. She
begged her father’s prayers and prayed to God that they would one day have
“a joyful and happy meeting in heaven.” Fortunately for Margaret, she
became so ill while in prison that she could not stand trial in September. By
the time she did appear in court, a new tribunal with a different charge,
which we have yet to discuss, set her free.12
Finally, as yet another example of family guilt by association, on May 14
warrants were issued for the arrest of George Jacobs Jr., the elder George’s
son, and the younger George’s wife, Rebecca. George Jr. escaped and did
not return until the trials ended. The story is that he took up residence “in a
foreign country,” perhaps Canada. Rebecca, George’s wife and the mother
of four children, was slightly – perhaps more than slightly – insane. With
her daughter and father-in-law already in jail and her husband charged but
having escaped without her, she was much overwrought. She did not flee,
however, but was apprehended and jailed.13
Rebecca Jacobs’s mother (Rebecca Fox) petitioned the governor and his
council for her release, apprising him of Rebecca’s debilitating mental con-
dition. She described her daughter as “well known to be a person crazed,
distracted, and broken in mind.” She had been that way for twelve years or
more, her mother reported, but she had grown even worse while in prison.
“Christianity and nature do each of them oblige your petitioner to be very
solicitous in this matter,” she wrote, “and although many weighty cases do
exercise your thoughts, yet your petitioner can have no rest in her mind till
such time as she has offered this her address on behalf of her daughter.”
Rebecca’s mother insisted that she was not capable of doing that with which
she had been charged, and she begged the government to grant her release.
The governor did not respond, but on January 3, 1693, when the mood had
changed, a grand jury acquitted her.14
John Willard Changes Sides

On the day the magistrates examined George and Margaret Jacobs, they
issued a warrant for the arrest of John Willard. Willard’s origins are
unclear, but he lived for a time during his youth in Lancaster, Massachusetts. In
the 1680s, he and his wife resided in Groton. His wife, however, was a third-
generation member of Salem village’s large Wilkins family, which occupied
much of the western part of the village. It was his wife who brought Willard to
Salem village.15
For a time, the Wilkins family operated a logging and lumber-processing
operation. The business failed, however, and at one point Bray Wilkins, the
family patriarch, was arrested for stealing hay to feed the oxen that he used
to transport the lumber to town. They were forced to return two-thirds of
their land to its original owner, who later seized other Wilkins’s assets as
well. By the 1680s, though not impoverished, their fortunes had declined
rather precipitously.16
The Wilkins family openly and actively supported the Putnams and the
village autonomy movement. They joined the village church soon after its
establishment in 1689. Only one Wilkins appeared to have been opposed –
one of Bray’s younger sons, Thomas, who had married a niece of Rebecca
Nurse. Thomas Wilkins became one of the four “dissenting brethren” who
led the anti-Parris movement within the village church, and subsequently his
father disinherited him. Thomas Wilkins did not join his family in its attack
on John Willard.17
Margaret Knight Willard was the first Wilkins to not marry a Salem vil-
lage resident. Moreover, rather than being a farmer, her husband was a land
speculator. In March 1690, John Willard purchased a village lot totaling
between 400 and 500 acres, which he subdivided and sold for a considerable
profit. It might have been his land speculation that caused the Wilkins
family to distrust Willard, but that is difficult to prove. What is known is
that when John Willard was accused of witchcraft at least ten members of
the Wilkins family testified against him.18
The principal reason for including Willard’s story here is that he had the
distinction of being both a participant in, and opponent to, the Salem witch
trials. He was a Salem deputy constable during the early days of the trials.
As such, in March, he had brought in for trial several of the accused. Then,
however, he had a change of heart, and he made his sentiments known. In
one instance, at the house of a relative, he is quoted as having said in
reference to the girls, “Hang them, they’re all witches!”19
In April, rumors of Willard’s criticism of the hearings and of his invol-
vement in the diabolical conspiracy began to circulate. Reportedly, he went
to Bray Wilkins and asked Wilkins to pray with him, but Wilkins put him
off, explaining that he had other business to which he must attend. Bray did
say that he would consider praying with Willard if he returned home early
enough, but he did not and Willard, quite likely taking offense, never again
asked him for his help.20
Soon after, Willard planned a trip to Boston with Henry Wilkins Jr. for
election week. Wilkins’s son, seventeen-year-old Daniel, who had heard the
rumors concerning Willard, urged his father not to go. The two went
anyway, as did Bray Wilkins and his wife, though separately. Daniel Wilk-
ins’s fears notwithstanding, his father’s and John Willard’s trip to Boston
passed uneventfully, as did passage for the eighty-two-year-old Bray Wilkins
and his only slightly younger wife. On Election Day, all were invited to dine
with Richard Way in Dorchester, the Reverend Deodat Lawson and others
in attendance. Willard arrived later than the rest, however, and upon his
entrance Bray Wilkins thought he saw unpleasantness if not anger in
Willard’s countenance, which may well have been the case. Shortly, Bray
experienced considerable suffering. He was, to use his own words, “like a
man on a rack.”21
Bray Wilkins believed Willard was responsible for his torment. He told
his wife, “Mr. Lawson and others there were all amazed,” and knew not
what to do for him. It took him three or four days to recover sufficiently to
return home, and he still needed to be in bed. Moreover, Bray found his
grandson Daniel gravely ill. His family and neighbors suspected foul play, and
they summoned the Reverend Samuel Parris. Parris brought with him Mercy
Lewis and Mary Walcott. When they entered Daniel Wilkins’s room, the girls
saw Willard’s specter and that of “Old Mrs. Buckley” crushing the boy’s throat
and chest, and they could not stop them. The boy soon died. Lewis and Wal-
cott were taken to Bray Wilkins’s room, where Lewis reported seeing John
Willard sitting on Bray’s belly. Bray later reported that at that very moment he
had experienced “grievous pain in the small of [his] belly.”22
A coroner’s jury was called to rule on Daniel Wilkins’s death. The records of
its ruling have been lost, but the comments of those involved in the case suggest
that the jury ruled that Wilkins had died of strangulation, which they, if not the
jury, attributed to Willard and Buckley. Bray Wilkins, for example, answered
those who later held him responsible for Willard’s conviction that it was not
his testimony “but the testimony of the afflicted persons and the jury” con-
cerning the murder of his grandson that had made the difference. In the church
records, the Reverend Parris’s comment on the jury’s verdict was brief but to
the point: “Dan Wilkins. Bewitched to death.”23
On May 10, the magistrates issued a warrant for John Willard’s arrest for
“sundry acts of witchcraft … committed on the bodies” of Bray Wilkins,
Samuel Wilkins, and others. Constable John Putnam Jr. went to Willard’s
house but could not find him. Willard’s relations and friends told him that
he had fled. On May 15, a second warrant covering the entirety of the
colony was issued, and Willard was found near Lancaster, forty miles away,
and delivered to the Salem magistrates.24
Upon Willard’s entering the examination room, on May 18, the girls fell into
fits. The magistrates informed him that his fleeing from the law constituted an
acknowledgement of guilt, but they nonetheless urged him “to confess the
truth.” Willard explained that he had fled out of fear, but that he also feared
not, but that “in his due time” the Lord would make him “as white as snow.”
The magistrates told Willard that in addition to afflicting the girls he had been
charged with “dreadful murder,” and that if he desired mercy from God, he
should confess. But he would not. He was accused of “murdering and bewitch-
ing” his relations and of bewitching his grandfather because he had prayed that
the Kingdom of Satan be “thrown down.” Willard began to explain, only to be
cut off by the magistrates with “we do not send for you to preach.”25
Susannah Sheldon’s deposition was entered, wherein she testified that the
apparitions of “William Shaw’s first wife, the widow Cooke, Goodman
Jones, and his child” had appeared to her and claimed that Willard had
murdered them. Similarly, Ann Putnam Sr. deposed that the shapes of
Samuel Fuller and Lydia Wilkins had told her that Willard had murdered
them, and that Willard himself appeared to her admitting to have murdered
Fuller, Wilkins, and eleven others!26
Ann Putnam Jr. testified that Willard had appeared to her, threatening to kill
her, as he had her little sister Sarah, if she did not sign his book. She also
reported having seen the apparition of John Wilkins’s first wife, who said
Willard had had a hand in her death. Then being transported to Wills Hill,
Putnam had witnessed John Willard’s apparition afflict both his grandfather
Daniel Wilkins and Rebecca Wilkins. Willard told Putnam, upon that occasion,
that he would kill Daniel Wilkins if he could, but that he did not have enough
power to do so. He would go to George Burroughs to get it.27
Finally, a deposition from Lydia Nichols was read. Nichols reported that
Mrs. Willard had told her “how cruelly her husband had beaten her,”
whereupon Benjamin Wilkins testified to Willard’s “unnatural usage” of his
wife, and Peter Prescot told the magistrates that Willard had admitted to
him that he had beaten her. At that point, Susannah Sheldon leaped forward
to point out that the “Black Man” was whispering in Willard’s ear, telling
him not to confess, and soon the rest of the afflicted girls screamed that
those Willard was accused of murdering had gathered about him.28
The magistrates asked if Willard thought the girls were bewitched. “Yes, I
really believe it,” he responded. They asked why if in other instances their
identification of their afflicters had been found to be true that would not be
the case with him, but Willard only continued to insist that he was “as
innocent as the child that is now to be born.” The examination ended with
Willard’s repeatedly trying to recite the Lord’s Prayer, stumbling each time.
“It is a strange thing,” he said. He could say it without error at other times.
“I think I am bewitched as well as they,” he said and laughed, but the
magistrates saw no humor in it: “No, it is no strange thing that God will
not suffer a wizard to pray to him,” the records show without naming the
examiner.29 They ordered Willard jailed.
Daniel Andrew is Charged
Daniel Andrew was one of Salem village’s wealthiest men in 1692. Andrew
had been born in obscurity in Watertown. At age twenty-five, in 1669, he
moved to Salem town where he purchased two small but valuable house lots
near the center of town, one of which contained an apothecary shop. In
1671, he was paid to teach school in his home, but soon afterward he took
up house-building. Officially he was known as a bricklayer, but in practice
he made considerable money building some of the town’s finest homes and a
new meetinghouse. Andrew married Sarah Porter, the youngest child of
John Porter, and the sizable inheritance from her father upon his death
included a large tract of land in Salem village. The Andrews moved to the
village, close to Joseph and Benjamin Porter, where Daniel undertook some
shrewd land purchases and continued his success as a contractor.30
In February 1692, Andrew purchased a town landing wharf at the point
where the Frost Fish Brook, flowing southward through the eastern part of
Salem village, traversed Ipswich Road and widened into the navigable Frost
Fish River. From his dock, Andrew could transport supplies both into the
village from town markets and out, in the latter case floating to town farm
products from farms on the east side of Salem village. In time, Daniel
Andrew became politically active as part of the same Porterite faction that
sought the Reverend Parris’s removal, and beginning in 1685 he was elected
to town selectman five times, including the election of March 1692 to which
we have already referred.31
On May 14, while he was both a member of the village committee and a
town selectman, a warrant was issued for Daniel Andrew’s arrest. The
constable searched his home, but Andrew was not found. On the same day
George Jacobs Jr. disappeared, Andrew too “found refuge in a foreign
country.”32
The Carys Escape

That George Jacobs Jr. escape to parts unknown no doubt concerned many
of the proponents of the Salem witch trials. More worrisome was the pro-
minent Daniel Andrew’s escape, but he too left no trace of where he had
gone. Most troubling were the prominent individuals, like Philip and Mary
English, who had fled but whose whereabouts were known and yet nothing
was done. Such was the case with Elizabeth Cary, the wife of Captain
Nathaniel Cary, a wealthy shipmaster and shipbuilder from Charlestown.33
In mid-May, rumors began to circulate that Elizabeth Cary was about to
be cried out against. On May 24, she and her husband Nathaniel attended a
session of the magistrates at the Salem village meetinghouse. In his account
of the visit, Nathaniel made his intentions for going to Salem clear. “Being
much disturbed” by rumors that his wife had been accused of witchcraft and
“by advice,” he had gone “to see if the afflicted did know her.” The Carys
were only spectators, and no one had taken any notice of them except for
once or twice when the girls came to Elizabeth and asked her name. Perhaps
emboldened by this, Cary asked the Reverend John Hale, whom he already
knew, if he might be allowed to speak to those who had accused his wife.
After the examination Hale reported he could, but that it would not be at
the Reverend Parris’s home, as Hale had promised earlier, but at Ingersoll’s
ordinary.34
The Carys went to the nearby ordinary, Cary wrote, where John Indian
waited on them and with minimal coaxing and a drink of cider showed
them several scars that he said had been caused by witchcraft. He told them
of his wife Tituba, who had been imprisoned for witchcraft, but soon
Indian was upstaged by the dramatic entry of the young girls. They “began
to tumble down like swine,” Cary continued, and to cry out the name Cary,
and almost immediately a warrant was delivered summoning his wife to
appear before the magistrates, who were sitting in chambers nearby.35
Two girls stepped forward as Elizabeth Cary’s chief accusers. Elizabeth
declared that she had never seen them before, but the magistrates ordered
her to stand with her arms outstretched. Cary requested permission to hold
one of her hands, but the magistrate denied his request. “She desired me to
wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face,” Cary reported,
but when she grew faint and wished to lean against him for support,
Magistrate Hathorne replied that if she had strength enough to torment the
afflicted, she should be strong enough to stand unassisted.36
Nathaniel Cary spoke out against what he described as “their cruel pro-
ceedings,” but the magistrates commanded him to be silent or be removed from
the room. John Indian was brought in and “he fell down and tumbled like a
hog,” Cary noted. The magistrates asked the girls who had afflicted Indian, and
they answered Elizabeth Cary. The justices ordered Elizabeth to touch Indian,
with her face turned away lest she make matters worse by looking at him.
The guards guided her hand toward Indian, but he held her hand and pulled
Elizabeth to the floor. Indian’s hand was removed and hers put on his,
whereupon “the cure was quickly wrought.”37
Once again, Nathaniel Cary spoke out. “Being extremely troubled at their
inhumane dealings,” Cary “uttered a hasty speech,” wherein he prayed “that
God would take vengeance on them” and “desir[ed] that God would deliver
[his wife] out of the hands of unmerciful men.” God did not, at least at the
moment, and Elizabeth Cary was ordered jailed. She was sent to a Boston
prison, but her husband managed to get her moved to Cambridge in his own
County of Middlesex. After one night in a Cambridge jail, she was put in
leg irons weighing about eight pounds, Cary continued, and the combination
of those weights and “her other afflictions soon brought her into convulsion
fits,” such that he thought she might die that night. He sought in vain to
have the irons removed, but Elizabeth survived.38
Realizing that it was now certain his wife would stand trial for witch-
craft, Nathaniel Cary visited a session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer
(to be introduced in the next chapter) “to see how things were managed.”
Finding that “the specter evidence was there received, together with idle, if
not malicious, stories against people’s lives,” he knew what the fate of all of
the accused, including his wife, would be. “I acquainted her with her
danger,” Cary explained, “and that if she were carried to Salem to be tried,
she would never return.” And when he could not persuade authorities to
move Elizabeth’s case to his home county of Middlesex, Nathaniel arranged
for her escape.39
At the end of July, Elizabeth Cary fled to Rhode Island, but fearing that
she would not be safe there, she continued on to New York “along with
others that had escaped the cruel hands” of Massachusetts’s officials. (The
Englishes escaped to New York at about the same time.) New York’s
Governor Benjamin Fletcher, Nathaniel reported, was “very courteous” to
her. Nathaniel remained behind, and upon Elizabeth’s escape, some of his
goods were seized. Nathaniel was imprisoned for half a day, but when he
was released, he joined Elizabeth in New York, where they remained until
the trials ended.40
John Alden Is Arrested

A warrant was issued for John Alden’s arrest on May 28. He had been a
resident of Boston for over thirty years and a member of the Puritan
Church. The reader may remember him as the firstborn son of the same John
and Priscilla Alden mentioned in the more romantic histories of Plymouth
Colony by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But more to the point, he was a
merchant, a ship’s captain during the French and Indian Wars, and a repre-
sentative of the British in their negotiations with the Indians. After several trips
to northern New England, he was suspected of trading with the enemy –
including lead shot and gun powder – but he was never charged. Now age
seventy, Alden was wealthy and powerful. How his name came to the attention
of the Salem girls, however, is unknown.41
Alden’s physical stature reminded some of testimony offered by Tituba
weeks earlier. Was he the tall man from Boston that Tituba had seen but
had not been able to identify? Officials had been puzzled and worried about
this unknown person, second only to the “black minister” in importance,
but to date they had had little to go on. Perhaps Alden was their man! That
very possibility alone may have led the Salem magistrates to issue the order
for Alden’s arrest, but officially they issued the warrant upon the complaints
of Mary Walcott, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Booth, Ann
Putnam Jr., and Mary Warren.42
On the same day Philip English faced the magistrates, May 31, Alden strode
into the courtroom. According to his own account of the affair, Alden did not
move directly to the front of the room. Instead, he stood near the rear where he
could observe his accusers without making his presence obvious. The girls,
who had never met him, were already afflicted – screaming, crying, and rolling
about the floor – but when the magistrates asked them to identify their assai-
lant, they first pointed to another person! Only after a man, who held up an
unidentified girl to see over the crowd, whispered something into her ear did
she get it right. “How did you know it was Alden?” a magistrate asked. “The
man told me so,” she responded, according to Alden.43
The magistrates were skeptical of such an identification, so they ordered
the girls and Alden outside where they were to pick him out from among
several others in the sunlight. “There stands Alden!” one cried. “A bold
fellow with his hat on before the judges.” “He sells powder and shot to the
Indians and French,” and “lies with the Indian squaws and has Indian
papooses.” Alden was immediately taken into custody and his sword was
taken from him, as he afflicted the girls with it. When returned to the
meetinghouse, he asked the magistrates how they could believe he would come
to the village to afflict those he had never known or even seen. Further, he
asked why his looking at the magistrates did not affect them as it had the girls,
but the magistrates did not respond.44
Joining Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin for the hearing was Alden’s
friend, Bartholomew Gedney, in whom he trusted for a reasoned response to
events. He must have been more than a little surprised, therefore, when
Gedney urged Alden to “confess and give glory to God.” “I hope to give glory
to God, but not to gratify the Devil,” Alden responded, and he challenged
anyone who ever knew him to step forward and testify that they had ever
suspected him of being a witch. Gedney admitted he had known Alden for
many years and had always looked upon him as “an honest man,” but said he
had seen enough that day to change his mind. Gedney joined Hathorne and
Corwin in ordering Alden to be taken to jail.45
Imprisoned in Boston, John Alden was visited by his friends Cotton
Mather, Samuel Willard, and Samuel Sewall. It was a daring gesture on their
part, but then they must have found the charges against John Alden difficult
to accept. On July 20, those three and others prayed for Alden. Some may
have also proposed a course of action, because Alden would not remain
much longer in jail.46 As published by Robert Calef from Alden’s personal
account of his ordeal:
To Boston Alden was carried by a constable. No bail would be taken

for him, but was delivered to the prison-keeper, where he remained fif-
teen weeks; and then, observing the manner of trials, and evidence then
taken, was at length prevailed with to make his escape.47
In September, Alden escaped to Duxbury, Massachusetts, where his relatives

resided. He is reported to have made his appearance there late at night and
begged shelter and protection from the Devil who was pursuing him. Whe-
ther he remained there or went on to other climes, which is more likely, we
do not know. Unlike the others, who remained away until the trials had
ended, however, Alden returned while they were in their final stages. The
climate of the hunt had changed by that time, so even though he was bound
over to the Superior Court at Boston for trial, on the last Tuesday of April
1693 he was discharged.48
The Andover Witch-Hunt

Also in May, the first resident of Andover was taken into custody and
charged with witchcraft. Already the number of charges being made outside
of Salem village was surpassing those made in the village, but Andover
would soon top all communities in the area. By 1692, Andover suffered from
serious factional conflicts similar to those in Salem village, including grow-
ing pains, construction of a new meeting house, and hiring of a new minis-
ter. By the end of July, more than fifty of its residents would be jailed and
several hanged. Andover, therefore, is worth pursuing in some detail at this
point. It provides a good comparative case study of another community
caught in the grip of the witchcraft hysteria.
Martha Carrier was ordered arrested on May 28 upon the complaints of
Joseph Holton and John Walcott, both of Salem village. When she was
taken into custody, four of her children were taken with her. The records of
what happened to them have been lost, but we do know that they were all
eventually released. The confessions of three of the Carrier children have
survived. Sarah Carrier, age eight, admitted to having been a witch since the
age of six, when her mother made her “set [her] hand to a [red] book.” After
touching the book, her mother baptized her in Andrew Foster’s pasture in the
presence of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., her Aunt Mary Toothaker, and her cousin.
Those present promised her a black dog, Sarah continued, but she had never
received one. She had been given a cat instead, but they told her the cat would
tear her to pieces if she did not set her hand to the book.49
Sarah could not recall ever having seen the Devil or the “Black Man,” but
she did provide some details on the witches’ Sabbath, during which she had
been baptized. Her mother had baptized her saying, “Thou are mine forever
and ever. Amen.” Further, she had taught Sarah how to afflict people, and
thereafter she had pinched people – spectrally, not in person – and traveled
through the air, often carried by her mother, who at times took the form of
a black cat.50
Richard Carrier was the second of Martha Carrier’s children to confess.
He too offered evidence that helped condemn his mother, as well as his
brother Andrew. Richard had succumbed only five weeks before, he repor-
ted, in the presence of Mrs. Bradbury, and since then he had joined in the
affliction of others. At another time, the child added, he had seen a dozen
gathered witches, including Elizabeth How, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Wilds,
the Procters, Martha Cory, Bridget Oliver (Bishop), and John Willard. Once
again, however, he had not seen the “Black Man.”51
Thomas Carrier offered much the same report. He, too, confessed that his
mother had baptized him into the craft. He had been a witch for only one
week, but during that brief time he had afflicted others. The process had
begun, he explained, when a yellow bird appeared to him, followed by his
mother who brought him a book. She said that “it would do him good” if
he set his hand to the book, but if he refused, she would tear him to pieces.
He did so and was baptized in the Shaw Shin River, his mother proclaiming
that “he was hers forever.” He too named Elizabeth Johnson.52
The testimony of the children was devastating to Martha Carrier’s case.
As Cotton Mather concluded, “This rampant hag was the person of whom
the confessions of the witches, and of her own children among the rest,
agreed that the Devil had promised … [she] would be queen of hell.” The
record of Carrier’s examination, dated May 31, provides some insights into
Mather’s choice of the phrase “rampant hag” – she spoke her mind quite
openly and at times offensively to the magistrates. Nevertheless, she denied
the girls’ charges that she had tormented them or threatened to cut their
throats if they refused to sign the Devil’s book, and when one of the accu-
sers cried out that Carrier was sticking pins into her, and another that the
“Black Man” had appeared near her, Carrier replied that she saw no black
man but the magistrates!53
Whenever Carrier looked at the girls they fell to the floor, so Hathorne
asked if she could look at them without such a result. “They will dissemble,
if I look upon them,” she explained coolly, but “it is false; the Devil is a liar.
I look upon none since I came into the room but you.” When Susannah
Sheldon testified that Carrier had murdered thirteen people, Carrier lost her
composure. She rebuked the magistrates, charging, “It is a shameful thing
that you should mind those folks that are out of their wits.” And to her
accusers, Carrier added, “You lie. I am wronged.”54
The record of Carrier’s hearing closes with the following comment:
The tortures of the afflicted were so great that there was no enduring of
it, so that she was ordered away and to be bound hand and foot with
all expedition, the afflicted in the meanwhile almost killed to the great
trouble of all spectators, magistrates, and others.
The Reverend Samuel Parris simply added that Mary Walcott had told the
magistrates that Carrier had been a witch for forty years.55
If the arrest of Martha Carrier planted seeds of suspicion about other wit-
ches in Andover, nothing resulted until July. At that point, Andover started
down the path already blazed by Salem village. The wife of John Ballard
became seriously ill, and her local doctor was unable to alleviate her suffering.
The untoward events of Salem having provided an explanation for several
similar afflictions, and having found the alleged witch Martha Carrier in their
midst, John Ballard decided to seek another type of diagnosis for his wife’s
illness. He feared the “Devil’s hand” might be upon her.56
Ballard let his plan be known to his fellow townspeople, and soon he had
considerable support. Goody Ballard was not the only person ill in Andover,
and the others were willing to share the expense Ballard would incur in
bringing one of the young women to town to investigate the matter. Local
minister Thomas Bernard, several church deacons, and Justice of the Peace
Dudley Bradstreet, son of the retired governor, all lent their support and
representatives were sent to Salem. They returned with Ann Putnam Jr. and
Mary Walcott.57
Putnam and Walcott were welcomed with near reverence, their success as
instruments in uncovering the presence of the Devil having preceded them.
When taken to the bedside of Goody Ballard, the girls fell into fits and
accused Ann Foster, her daughter Mary Lacey Sr. and her granddaughter
Mary Lacey Jr. All three women were soon charged with witchcraft and
confessed, naming several other neighbors. When Mary Lacey Jr. confessed,
she named Martha Carrier, accusing her of using witchcraft to kill two of
Carrier’s brothers and a brother-in-law. Lacey also accused Carrier’s two
teenage sons, Richard and Andrew, who confessed, naming their mother, to
which Richard added Mary Bradbury, Rebecca Nurse, and Elizabeth How.
The girls were taken to other homes, where they visited the long-term ill,
the blind, and the lame, all of whom awaited the girls’ arrival, as one his-
torian has put it, much as others in other times would welcome faith hea-
lers. And the girls did not disappoint them.58
When Putnam and Walcott entered the sickrooms of the afflicted, their
response was invariably the same. They saw one witch at the head of the bed,
another at the foot. It was as Ballard and others had suspected; the “Devil’s
hand” was upon the afflicted, and it was being exercised by people within their
midst. Because the girls were not familiar with the people of Andover, how-
ever, they could not place names with the faces they saw in their visions. It was
necessary to provide what we might today call a police line-up.59
Several local residents were blindfolded and brought before the girls, in
the throes of full possession, to undergo the touch test. It is not known
how they were chosen, but if previous crises provide any guidance, they
were probably suspect because of previous behavior. It may be that some
were not, and that they were included as a testing measure, but that is
mere speculation, perhaps influenced by our knowledge of modern judicial
proceedings.60
Regardless of how those led before the young girls were chosen, as each
was led to touch the girls they ceased their struggling, indicating that the
spirit of the Devil had been drawn off. There were very few exceptions. Six
of those condemned in the process later described the incident:
After Mr. Bernard had been at prayer, we were blindfolded, and our
hands were laid upon the afflicted persons, they being in their fits, and
falling into their fits at our coming unto their presence, as they said: and
some led us, and laid our hands upon them; and then they said they
were well, and that we were guilty of afflicting them. Whereupon we
were all seized as prisoners …61
The naming of names through confessions of the accused followed, and
soon dozens were charged. Between July 15 and the end of September,
Dudley Bradstreet issued at least forty warrants, and the list would have
been longer had he not let it be known at that point that he would not issue
any more based on such evidence. All but six of the accused confessed. The
effect of such revelations on the town of Andover was much as it had been
on Salem village. The accused were bewildered. “We were all exceedingly
astonished and amazed and consternated and affrighted, even out of reason,”
the same six women who were noted above later recalled. Some were even
persuaded by the course of events to consider the possibility that they might, in
fact, be guilty, and they searched their memories for the moment at which they
may have unwittingly made their pact with the Devil.62
Mary Osgood, whose husband was a church deacon, recalled that eleven
or twelve years earlier, when she was “in a melancholy state and condition”
following the birth of a child, she had been led into the arms of the Devil.
She recalled how when she was walking in her orchard a cat had diverted
her from praying, “about which time” she made a covenant with the Devil.
The Devil appeared as a black man, and Osgood laid her finger on his book,
leaving a red spot. Upon her “signing,” the Devil told her “that he was her
god, and that she should serve and worship him,” and, the record of her
examination reads: “she believes she consented to it.”63
Two years later, Osgood continued, she “was carried through the air” to
Five Mile Pond, where she was baptized by the Devil. He “dipped her face
in the water and made her renounce her former baptism and told her she
must be his, soul and body, forever, and that she must serve him.” She
promised to do so and confessed that thereafter she had afflicted several
people “by pinching her bed clothes and giving consent the Devil should do
it in her shape.” Upon further questioning, Osgood admitted that she did
not believe the Devil could take the shape of an innocent person. She further
admitted that although the Devil had promised her “abundant satisfaction
and quietness in her future state,” she had only grown more miserable and
discontented.64
Samuel Wardwell remembered that about twenty years earlier, he too was
so “much discontented” that he could not get any work done. The source of
his discontent, he admitted, was his unrequited love for one “Maid Barker,”
likely the wife of William Barker. He “had been foolishly led along with
telling of fortunes,” he allowed, and he had often used the phrase “the Devil
take it” when his fields were invaded by various creatures. The Devil, he
suggested, may have used his discontent and indiscretions to take advantage
of him. During one moment of his being in a “discontented frame,” he had
witnessed an assemblage of cats and a man among them who called himself
“a prince of the air” and promised Wardwell a comfortable life if he would
“honor him.” Wardwell promised to do so, signed the man’s book by
making “a mark like a square” with a black pen, and pledged that he
thereby covenanted with the Devil until he turned sixty. He was forty-six.65
The most notable confession of the Andover accused, however, came
from William Barker, likely the husband of the above-mentioned “Maid
Barker.” His confession revealed what was no doubt behind many of those
who resisted the seventeenth-century Puritan world in which they lived. He
confessed that the Devil, who appeared in the shape of a black man with a
cloven foot, had seduced him some three years earlier. Barker explained that
“he had a great family, [that] the world went hard with him,” and that,
although he had gone into debt, he was “willing to pay every man his own.”
The Devil had offered to pay all of his debts and to guarantee that he would
live comfortably if Barker would “give up himself soul and body unto him,”
which he did. Barker signed the Devil’s book by dipping his finger into blood
that was brought to him and making his mark. At the same time, however,
the Devil told Barker that he intended to abolish all of the churches in the
land, to put an end to resurrection and judgment and to punishment and
shame for sin, and to provide for a future wherein all under the Devil’s rule
would be equal and “live bravely.”66
Barker provided the most detailed account among the accused of Andover
of the witches’ Sabbaths. A trumpet summoned about a hundred partici-
pants from as far away as Connecticut to the meeting, Barker recalled.
George Burroughs presided, and he administered communion with bread
and wine. “It was proposed at the meeting to make as many witches as they
could,” Barker reported, “and the Black Man exhorted them to pull down
the kingdom of Christ and set up the kingdom of the Devil.”67
Barker explained why Salem village had been chosen for attack. It was, he
revealed, “by reason of the people being divided and their differing with
their minister.” The Devil’s design, however, was not to stop there. It was
to destroy Salem village, beginning with the minister’s house, and thereafter
“to destroy the Church of God, and to set up Satan’s kingdom” throughout
the land, whereupon all would be well. Barker reported that he had been
told “by some of the grandees” among the witches that there were “about
307 witches in the country,” and that they were “much disturbed” with the
afflicted because they had been “discovered by them.” Further, the witches
“cursed the judges” because by their actions “their society” had been
“brought under.” And, finally, Barker offered that he thought the afflicted
individuals were innocent victims, that authorities were doing “God’s good
service,” and that he did not know, nor had he heard of, even one innocent
person that had been put in prison.68
If any of the Andover accused were reluctant to confess, there were many
to urge them on. Instructive were the cases of Ann Foster, her daughter
Mary Lacey, and her granddaughter, also named Mary Lacey – hereafter
referred to as Lacey Sr. and Jr. All were charged with tormenting Goody
Ballard. Ann Foster was the first to succumb. On July 15, after four separate
examinations, she offered a detailed confession. She reported that the Devil
had appeared to her several times in the shape of a bird, and that ever since
she had the “gift” of being able to afflict people. When asked how she could
tell the bird was the Devil, she answered, “because he came white and van-
ished black, and that the Devil told her that she should have this gift, and
that she must believe him.”69
On July 16, Foster revealed that it was Martha Carrier (already con-
demned) who made her a witch. Carrier had come to her some six years
earlier and threatened that “the Devil would tear her to pieces and carry her
away,” if she refused to serve him. She reported that she had attended a
meeting of some twenty-five witches in Salem village and that Carrier had
informed her of the meeting, urged her to go, and ridden with her to the
meeting “upon sticks.” George Burroughs had officiated, Foster added.70
Foster admitted to having injured those who had lodged complaints
against her. She afflicted Timothy Swan by tying a rag in a knot and
throwing it into a fire, and she choked others “by squeezing poppets like
them.” Moreover, she reported that she had heard tell from other witches
that there were 305 witches “in the whole country, and that they would ruin
that place, the village.” Their purpose in ruining Salem village, she
explained, as had William Barker, was to “set up the Devil’s kingdom.”71
Mary Lacey Sr. was brought up on charges, and on July 21, upon finding
herself in the same room with her confessing mother, she cried, “We have
forsaken Jesus Christ, and the Devil hath got hold of us. How shall we get
clear of this Evil One?” She too proceeded to confess. She readily confirmed
that her mother was a witch and that she was as well.72
Mary Lacey Sr. reported that she, her mother, and Martha Carrier had
ridden together to Salem village on a pole, and that three or four years ear-
lier she had seen “Mistress Bradbury, Goody How, and Goody Nurse bap-
tized by the Old Serpent at Newbury Falls. He dipped their heads into the
water and then said they were his, and he had power over them.” Six were
baptized on that occasion, Lacey continued, including “some of the chief or
higher powers,” with nearly 100 in attendance. When asked how she got to
Newbury Falls, she answered that “the Devil carried her in his arms.”73
On July 21, Lacey’s daughter, Mary Jr., confessed and reported seeing 77
other witches at a Sabbath she attended. After her confession, the record
reads, Mary Walcott, whom Lacey Jr. had afflicted, “came and took her by
the hand and was no way hurt.” Lacey Jr. asked Walcott’s forgiveness, and
according to the records, “both fell a weeping together.” Apparently, Mary
Lacey Jr. was alone during her confession, however, because, the records
continue, at that point Mary Lacey Sr. and Ann Foster were summoned once
again. The moment was dramatic, to say the least. Upon the arrival of the
two other women, the magistrates announced, “Here is a poor miserable
child, a wretched mother, and grandmother,” whereupon Mary Lacey Jr.
“broke forth” with “O mother, why did you give me to the Devil twice or
thrice over?” Her mother said she was sorry for having hurt her, but that
she had done so because of “that wicked one.”74
Lacey Jr. offered the same lament to her grandmother, whereupon the
magistrates interjected that because Mary Lacey Jr. had so thoroughly
repented of her actions, there was “an argument of hope” that she would be
“snatched out of the snare of the Devil.” Turning to the two older women,
they continued, “We desire you therefore to be free in the presence of God
and tell us the truth in this matter. Will you play with devouring fire, and
will you share everlasting flames and the society of this devouring lion that
has so ensnared you.” They would not. Both deeply lamented their having
covenanted with the Devil, but all three were nevertheless taken to jail.75
Less dramatic but instructive as well was the case of another Andover
resident who was persuaded to confess in quite another manner. Upon her
arrest, Martha Tyler later reported to Increase Mather, “she had no fears
upon her, and did think that nothing could have made her confess against
herself.” When she was taken to Salem by her brother, Jonathan Bridges,
and Andover schoolmaster, John Emerson, however, she was pressured into
doing so. Mather recorded her recollection of the affair:
[W]hen she came to Salem, she was carried to a room, where her
brother on one side, and Mr. John Emerson on the other side, did tell
her that she was certainly a witch, and that she saw the Devil before her
eyes at that time (and, accordingly, the said Emerson would attempt
with his hand to beat him away from her eyes); and they so urged her to
confess …
When she refused, Emerson threatened to withdraw, declaring her “undone,

body and soul, forever,” but her brother persisted. Mather continued:
Her brother urged her to confess, and told her that, in doing so, she
could not lie, to which she answered: “Good brother, do not say so, for
I shall lie if I confess, and then who shall answer unto God for my lie?”
He still asserted it, and said that God would not suffer so many good
men to be in such an error about it, and that she would be hanged if she
did not confess; and continued so long and so violently to urge her to
confess, that she thought, verily, that her life would have gone from her,
and became so terrified in her mind that she owned, at length, almost
anything that they propounded to her.76
“These several weeks later,” Mather concluded, Tyler had come to believe
that in confessing “she had wronged her conscience,” and that “she was
guilty of a great sin in belying herself and desired to mourn for it so long as
she lived.” She reported all of this, Mather noted, “with such affection,
sorrow, relenting grief, and mourning, as that it exceeds any pen to describe
and express the same.”77
There were other recantations among those who confessed in Andover, as
elsewhere. Samuel Wardwell’s recantation provides a second example. After
being charged with practicing witchcraft, he confessed that he had met the
Devil and been baptized by him, whereupon he was imprisoned. While in
prison, however, he met John Procter, whose resistance to the trials caused
Wardwell to have second thoughts. Wardwell then renounced his confession,
but as was the case with others who recanted, Wardwell remained in jail, and
on September 22 he was executed.78
The witch-hunt in Andover was shorter than that in Salem, but its
intensity was greater. It came on suddenly, and because Salem had paved
the way, it built to a climax more rapidly. Even dogs in the street were
suspected of having been bewitched, one by John Bradstreet, another son
of the ex-governor. Bradstreet fled to New Hampshire, but the dog was
executed. And when, at about the same time, his brother Dudley refused to
sign any more warrants, he was cried out against. His accusers charged
him with nine murders, whereupon he fled.79
The Andover witch-hunt ended as abruptly as it had begun, largely
because of the courage and intelligence of an individual who became one of
the most visible and effective critics of the witch trials. The Andover accu-
sers charged Robert Calef, a Boston merchant who was already known for
his skepticism. In his defense, Calef resorted to a tactic often used in the
past by those accused of witchcraft, but that had not yet been employed in
the Salem cases. He brought a defamation suit against his accusers, with a
claim for one thousand pounds.80 As it had been in the past, the threat of
such legal action was effective, especially when others among the accused
were prepared to take the same steps. The accusers fell silent, not only
against Calef, but altogether, at least in Andover. Unfortunately, however,
much damage had already been done, and at least fifty people were in prison
awaiting trial.81
We are about to turn to the actual trials, but before leaving Andover one
last point needs to be made. It has been noted that the various episodes in
the Great European Witch-Hunt occurred in communities in conflict. Ste-
phen Boyer and Paul Nissenbaum have persuasively made the case for Salem
village. Chadwick Hansen’s research, however, suggests that Andover was
an exception. He argues that accusations flourished in Andover in the
absence of such conflict. Andover, he writes, was largely a homogeneous
farming community without the agrarian-commercial strains noted in the
case of Salem village, or any other noticeable difficulties. The witchcraft
hysteria nevertheless struck Andover, as it had Salem, with as great, if not
greater, ferocity, and by the time it ended in that model community nearly
10 percent of its residents stood accused.82
Notes
1 Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 166.
University Press, 2014), 250, 517–518.
7
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 251–252; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 168.
11 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 742–743; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the
Invisible World (1700), in George Lincoln Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft
Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 364–365; George
Malcom Yool, 1692 Witch Hunt (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1992), 110.
13 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 270–271, 630–631; Yool, 1692 Witch Hunt,
70–71.
Yool, 1692 Witch Hunt, 70–71.
Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 195; Sidney
Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, MA: Sidney Perley, 1924),
II: 294–295.
16 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 195–197; Perley, The History of Salem,
II: 294–295, 394.
18 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 197–198; W. Elliot Woodward, ed.,
Records of Salem Witchcraft Copied from the Original Documents (1864; rep-
rint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), I: 275–276; II: 7–10; Records of the Salem
Witch-Hunt, 250–251, 273–274, 281–282.
22 Sarah Buckley was arrested later. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 527–528;
Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 175–177, 187, 192.
23 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 179, 198.
24 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 250–251, 273–274; Upham, Salem Witchcraft,
II: 172–174; Marion L. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry
into the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 148.
30 Perley, The History of Salem, II: 92, 307; III: 42, 71; Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem Possessed, 120–122.
31 Chadwick Hansen, “Andover Witchcraft and the Causes of the Salem Witchcraft
Trials,” in The Occult in America: New Historical Perspectives, eds. Howard
Kerr and Charles L. Crow (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 121–
122; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 113; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem
Village Witchcraft, 353–355; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 57, 65,
121–122, 130.
34 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 239–240; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 309,
325.
38 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 310; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II, 242.
41 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 247; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 143;
Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 112; Louise Breen, Transgressing the Bounds:
Subversive Enterprises and the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 197–208; Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil’s
Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002);
185–193; Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the
American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 144–148.
143.
43 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 144; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 112;
144.
46 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 145; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 135.
49 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 323–325; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 208;
Johnson and Toothaker were later charged as well. Records of the Salem Witch-
Hunt, 539–542.
50 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 539–542. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 209.
51 Mary Bradbury would later be charged. Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 612–
614; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 210–211.
53 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 211–212; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 335–
336.
55 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 335–336; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 185, II:
213.
58 John Procter reportedly submitted that Richard and Andrew were tortured lead-
ing to their confessions. Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 182; Gragg, The
Salem Witch Crisis, 141–142.
62 Gragg has found references to forty warrants, Hansen to forty-three, Baker to
forty-five, and Weisman to at least fifty. Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 142;
Hansen, “Andover Witchcraft,” 46; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 158; Richard
Weisman, Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-Century Massachusetts
(Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 143; Starkey, The Devil
in Massachusetts, 184; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 403.
68 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 561–564. Four days before Barker’s testimony,
on August 25, Susannah Post, also of Andover, reported in her confession that
she had attended a meeting with 200 witches and heard that there were 500 wit-
ches “in the country.” The previous July 30, Mary Toothaker of Billerica told the
magistrates that she had heard talk of witches intending to “pull down the
Kingdom of Christ and setting up the Kingdom of Satan.” Records of the Salem
Witch-Hunt, 355–356, 491–492.
74 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 471–477, 479–482; Baker, A Storm of Witch-
craft, 36.
76 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 404–405; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 694.
setts, 186.
79 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 248; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 187.
80 Here and elsewhere, “pounds” means the Massachusetts pound.
82 Hansen, “Andover Witchcraft,” 40; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 142. For more
on the Andover trials see: Philip Greven, Four Generations: Land, Population and
Family in Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970); and
Elinor Abbot, Our Company Increases Apace: History, Language, and Social Identity
in Early Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Dallas, TX: STL International, 2007).
7 “God Will Give You Blood to Drink”
Soon after George Burroughs’s hearing ended, the frigate Nonesuch entered
the port of Boston from England, ending a period of anticipation and anxi-
ety as great as that which ended with the finding of the “black minister.” On
board were Increase Mather, who was returning to Massachusetts with the
new colonial charter he had been sent to secure, and Sir William Phips, his
handpicked first Royal Governor.
Increase Mather, best known today perhaps for being the father of
Cotton, but then president of Harvard and pastor of Boston’s Second
Church, had been away for four years. He had been sent to England to
resecure the old charter, but when that was denied by the new king and
queen, William and Mary, he made the best that he could of creating a new
one. It contained some compromises, with which many Massachusetts Pur-
itans would not be pleased, but it had much to commend it as well. “Take it
with all its faults,” Mather explained, “and it is not so bad, but when I left
New England the inhabitants … would gladly have parted with many a
thousand pounds to have obtained one so good.” Edmund Andros would
not return, Mather pointed out, and the new charter did not meddle with
local government, as some had feared it would if precedents set by the
Andros administration were honored. Taxes would still be levied by the
General Court, wherein, again in contrast to what had happened during
the Dominion period, the people would be duly represented. And all of the
general privileges of English citizenship that Andros had called into question
were confirmed.1
As the arrival of Sir William Phips indicated, the people of Massachusetts
would no longer elect their governor; he would be appointed by the Crown.
Moreover, the electorate would no longer be limited to those in covenant
with the Church. Nearly all adult male Christians (save Roman Catholics)
who owned property would be enfranchised. It is true that it had long been
the case that those living outside of the covenant in Massachusetts greatly
outnumbered those living within, but the Puritan leadership did not feel
obligated by that to make any changes. After all, to be in the majority was
not necessarily to be among the godly, and it was the godly who were to
rule their “City on a Hill,” their “Bible Commonwealth.”2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-8
Certainly, a major point of saving grace in Mather’s return with a new
colonial charter was his companion Sir William Phips. If the people of
Massachusetts were to have to live with no longer being able to select their
own governor, they would take solace in having picked for them a man in
whom they had as much faith as any. Phips was no stranger to Massa-
chusetts. In fact, he was one of them. He had been born and raised in New
England. He was a man of common ancestry, rather than of aristocracy,
but he had worked his way to the top without alienating those he passed
along the way.3
Phips had been born in 1651 in what was to become Maine. His father
was a gunsmith, and William grew up in the wilderness without any formal
education. Reaching adolescence, he apprenticed himself to a ship’s carpen-
ter, and having mastered the trade he moved to Boston. Phips provided
himself with at least a rudimentary education, became a ship’s captain and
shipbuilder, and at age twenty-one married a “lady of good fashion.” His
bride was the widow of Captain Roger Spencer and the daughter of John
Hull (whereby she was related to Samuel Sewall), and it would seem she
rested content in the match, which in time resulted in considerable wealth
and prestige.4
In 1687, Phips raised from its watery grave off the coast of Haiti a Spanish
galleon loaded with thirty tons of silver and gold. For his toil, James II
knighted him and awarded him an 11,000-pound share of his find. Phips was
knighted when Massachusetts was incorporated into the Dominion of New
England and straining under the rule of the royally appointed Governor
Edmund Andros. The story is told that when, upon his being knighted,
James asked Phips what favor he would ask of the King, Phips requested the
restoration of New England’s charters and privileges. The King would not
concur. He did make Phips high sheriff of New England, but it was a post
without much authority, as neither Andros nor Phips had any use for the other.5
Upon his return to Massachusetts from England, Phips was baptized by
Cotton Mather and became a member of Mather’s Second Church. When asked
why he had not taken advantage of his well-earned fame to live in England, he
explained, in words that must have been music to New Englanders’ ears, and
which they no doubt recalled as he later returned to them as governor, “I knew
that if God had a people … it was here, and I resolved to rise and fall with
them.”6
Phips further proved himself to his fellow New Englanders in his courage
in battle against the French and Indians on the Maine frontier. In 1690, he
obtained command of an expedition that captured Port Royal in Nova
Scotia. That success led to his selection as commander of an amphibious
assault on the French stronghold of Quebec, but that ended in defeat and in
the loss of over 200 of his 2,000 men. Phips nevertheless sailed to London,
where he hoped to obtain another royal military commission. While there,
he supported the efforts of Increase Mather on behalf of the Massachusetts
charter.7
“God Will Give You Blood to Drink” 163
Mather seized the opportunity of Phips’s presence to suggest that if Mas-
sachusetts were to have a royally appointed governor, it should be Phips –
one whom both parties, England and New England, trusted. It had been
done, and now both men were returning to a colony racked by events about
which they knew nothing. Perhaps Phips, neither to the manor nor govern-
ing born, believed himself less than fully qualified to deal with what he
expected as governor; he was even less prepared to deal with what he did
not expect, but found, nevertheless. He expected to have to implement a less
than universally welcome charter and to govern a colony of strong-willed
Puritans; he did not expect to have to deal with witches.8
The Nonesuch sailed into Boston Harbor on Saturday evening May 14, 1692,
and Phips and Mather disembarked with as much pageantry as the Sabbath’s
eve would allow. On Monday, the governor was sworn in, and he assumed his
duties. Simon Bradstreet, the aged interim governor who had ruled since
Andros’s overthrow, was relieved of duty. Bradstreet had been inactive, if not
paralyzed, by events and old age, leaving matters to his second-in-command,
Thomas Danforth. It was under Bradstreet that matters at Salem reached a
fevered pitch, but, as his defenders have pointed out, no trials took place under
Bradstreet’s watch, perhaps reflecting his resistance to the entire affair.9 In
either event, on May 16 Bradstreet stepped aside.
The Court of Oyer and Terminer Is Established

In one of the great “what if” moments of history, Sir William Phips arrived
at the moment when he might have been able to make a significant differ-
ence in the course of the Salem witch trials. Forty people has already been
accused of witchcraft, and eight more were accused the day he arrived.
Twenty-seven were being held for trial, but none had as yet gone to court.
Whether or not they would be tried, and if they were, how their trials would
be conducted, was dependent in large measure on Phips’s actions. It may be
the case that had Phips acted forcefully at that point, history would have
been different. But he did not.10
Phips later reported that he was bewildered by what he found upon his
arrival in Massachusetts. The province was “miserably harassed with a most
horrible witchcraft or possession of devils,” he wrote. “Scores of poor people
were taken with preternatural torments, some scalded with brimstone, some
had stuck pins in their flesh, others hurried into the fire and water, and some
[were] dragged out of their houses and carried over the tops of trees and hills
for many miles together.” Phips was no skeptic when it came to witches. He
made it clear that he was a believer and took the threat that had been described
to him seriously. With the “loud cries and clamors of the friends of the afflic-
ted” in his ears and the advice of Deputy Governor William Stoughton and his
closest advisers, he felt compelled to act.11
As long as the colony had no charter and the legal basis of their laws and
court was suspect, the people of Massachusetts had been reluctant to
proceed to trial. With a new charter in effect providing a legal basis for
both, they insisted that Phips act, and act quickly, and that he constitute a
court by which the accused would be tried. Phips turned to his councilors
for advice, and they recommended establishing a Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner, commonly used in England. On May 27, the governor, through his
Council, issued a commission for the creation of such a court, “for dis-
covering what witchcraft might be at the bottom” of what had transpired,
as Phips later put it. Because it was commonly believed that witches could
ply their wares even from prison if they were left unshackled, Phips also
ordered those already jailed to be placed in chains. That accomplished, he
set out for the frontier to fight the French and Indians – enemies with whom
he was better acquainted. Deputy Governor Stoughton was left in charge.12
Although he did not mention the witchcraft crisis per se, Phips made his
motives clear in the text of the commission. He referred to the “many criminal
offenders” in custody; to their having long suffered the “many inconveniences
attending the throngings of the jails,” especially “at this hot season of the year”;
and to there being “no judicatories or courts of justice yet established.”
Unwittingly, however, Phips exceeded his authority in establishing the Court of
Oyer and Terminer. The new Massachusetts charter gave the provincial legis-
lature the power to create such a special court, but Phips would not convene
that body until June. Further, until the new legislature could meet, none of the
laws adopted under the old charter could be confirmed. Thus, the Court, which
had been improperly constituted, proceeded without a statute against the crime
it was impaneled to inveigh. Only one extenuating, and much debated, expla-
nation has been offered, which is that as British colonies the proceedings were
covered by the English statute of 1603, and by that act those convicted of
witchcraft could be sentenced to death.13
Phips named as judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer seven men “of
the best prudence and figures” that he could find, as he put it. All were
members of the Governor’s Council. We have already met Deputy Governor
William Stoughton, who was named to preside. A graduate of Harvard and
Oxford, he had served some fifteen years in the General Court and as a
member of Governor Edmund Andros’s Council. Also introduced earlier
was Bartholomew Gedney, a Salem physician, who had been a member of
the General Court and who had joined Hathorne and Corwin in presiding
over some of the preliminary hearings in Salem.14
Other appointees to the Court included John Richards, a wealthy Boston
merchant, who had served as captain of the militia, town selectman, and treas-
urer of Harvard College; Nathaniel Saltonstall of Haverhill, an experienced
Essex County judge and a member of the provincial Court of Assistants; Wait
Winthrop of Boston, grandson of the colony’s first governor, a major general in
the militia, and a member of the Governor’s Council; Captain Samuel Sewall of
Boston, destined to become Chief Justice of the (Massachusetts) Superior Court;
and Peter Sergeant, a prominent Boston merchant who had opposed Governor
Edmund Andros.15
According to Thomas Hutchinson, Phips listed John Hathorne and Jona-
than Corwin among prospective judges.16 Later historians, however, Charles
Upham being the first, did not include them among those who took seats on the
bench (Corwin would later be appointed to replace Nathaniel Saltonstall).17
The records of the Court of Oyer and Terminer having disappeared, there is no
way to document their absence, but Upham is probably correct. Hathorne and
Corwin were already well occupied in the preliminary hearings that would
continue even after the trials began, and perhaps Governor Phips wanted to
ensure a measure of objectivity by appointing people not directly involved in
those hearings.
Other people directly associated with the Court of Oyer and Terminer, but
not as judges, were Stephen Sewall and Thomas Newton. Sewall, of Salem
town, served as Clerk of the Court. He was closely tied to events in Salem if
only through the presence of Betty Parris, who had been entrusted to him for
safekeeping by her father. Newton, of Boston, the King’s Attorney General,
had no such connection. His job was to prepare the cases for the state. As was
common practice, the accused had no legal counsel to defend them. Grand
juries were charged with ruling on proposed indictments, and those indicted
were then subject to trial by jury, wherein all freemen – adult male property
owners, and as per the colonial charter of 1691, no longer required to belong to
a Puritan church – were eligible to serve on a jury.
In addition to their legal experience, the judges of the Court of Oyer and
Terminer no doubt considered those various standard sources on witchcraft
law, mentioned earlier in reference to the Salem magistrates, to which
should be added England’s Witchcraft Act of 1604; Richard Bernard’s Guide
to Grand-Jury Men (1627–1630); Michael Dalton’s Country Justice (1618);
and Joseph Keble’s An Assistance to Justices of the Peace (1683). The
Witchcraft Act called for the death penalty for those found guilty. Convic-
tion was to be predicated on the testimony of two eye-witnesses to a dia-
bolical act or a witch’s confession. But supporting evidence could include
the discovery of a witch’s familiars, the Devil’s mark, poppets, or magic
potions or charms, use of the touch test, or spectral evidence. One of the
judges, John Richards, asked Cotton Mather for his advice. In a lengthy letter,
Mather attributed the troubles at Salem to a “horrible witchcraft,” but he also
pleaded for caution and discretion in the Court’s actions. He urged the judges
to use spectral evidence with care. “It is very certain,” Mather wrote, echoing
objections raised by a number of the defendants already, “that the devils have
sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only innocent, but also very
virtuous.” Mather rejected the use of torture and instead recommended “cross
and swift questions.” If that should fail, the judges could always order the
accused to recite the Lord’s Prayer. In sum, his reputation for prosecutorial zeal
notwithstanding, Mather’s advice was well within the law and standard legal
procedures of the day.18
Although it might have chosen to act otherwise, the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner opted to follow those procedures established by the Salem magistrates.
On May 31, Thomas Newton went to Salem to observe seven examinations,
and he returned convinced that the hearings had been conducted fairly. What
reservations he retained, more as to who had been charged than how, he made
clear in a letter to Isaac Addington, Secretary of the province, that same day. He
noted that he had sent to Addington the names of the prisoners he wished to try
first. All had been formally indicted following their preliminary hearings by a
grand jury. However, Newton continued:
I fear we shall not this week try all that we have sent for; by reason the
trials will be tedious, and the afflicted persons cannot readily give their
testimonies, being struck dumb and senseless, for a season, at the name of
the accused. I have been all this day at the village, with gentlemen of the
council, at the examination of the persons, where I have beheld strange
things, scarce credible but to the spectators and too tedious here to relate;
and, amongst the rest, Captain Alden and Mr. English have their mittimus
[had been ordered held by the magistrates]. I must say, according to the
present appearance of things, they [the members of the council] are as
deeply concerned as the rest; for the afflicted spare no person of what
quality soever, neither conceal their crimes, though never so heinous.19
The Court of Oyer and Terminer treated the records of the preliminary
hearings as its primary source of information. The records were to be
entered as evidence, and the Court would proceed from there. It would add
to the record depositions gathered since the preliminary hearings and call
forth witnesses who had still other information to convey, after which the
case would be submitted to the jury. Newton recommended that at least
some of those who had confessed be used to testify against other defen-
dants. In the above-mentioned letter to Isaac Addington, Newton asked that
Tituba, for example, and “Mrs. (Margaret) Thatcher’s maid” be “transferred
as evidence,” and that they not appear in court with the prisoners present but
by themselves.20
Physical evidence, such as poppets and the Devil’s marks, would be
allowed, as would the testimony of those acquainted with the accused and
of the afflicted girls, who claimed they had seen the specters of individuals
doing them harm. Moreover, although never specifically stated, or even
admitted – and contrary to Cotton Mather’s advice – the Court of Oyer and
Terminer would treat as spectral evidence more than presumptive evidence.
Cotton Mather may have described the process best when he wrote, in the
case of Bridget Bishop, “there was little occasion to prove the witchcraft,
this being evident and notorious to all beholders.”21
Bridget Bishop Is Tried

Bridget Bishop was the first to be tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
The journal of the Court having disappeared, however, what transpired in
Bishop’s and all other cases can only be reconstructed from the surviving
related documents and from the comments of contemporary observers.
Bishop’s trial began on June 2, 1692, bringing to the Court as its precedent-
setting case one of the most notorious defendants of the lot. As one histor-
ian has said (failing to allow for the case of mistaken identity noted in
Chapter 5), given her “smooth and flattering manner” with men and the
notorious goings-on in her tavern, even if the question of witchcraft had not
provoked it, Bridget Bishop was a woman the Puritan community would
almost certainly have been bound to investigate, sooner or later.22
As was customary, Bridget Bishop had no counsel when she stood before
the Court. Thomas Newton entered as evidence records from Bishop’s
appearance before the Court of Assistants on witchcraft charges in 1680, as
well as the testimony solicited for her April 19 examination before the Salem
magistrates, including the charge that she had bewitched her first husband to
death. Newton then brought forth new evidence. One day, while walking by
the town meetinghouse it was reported, although under guard, Bishop had
glanced at the town’s meetinghouse. At that very moment, her guards
reported, a clatter arose within, whereupon investigators found “a board
which was strongly fastened with several nails transported into another
quarter of the house.”23 Bishop, it was assumed, had offered one last dramatic
act of defiance.
Interestingly, given the relative lack of emphasis on sexual matters in the
Salem witch trials (as compared to those in Europe), perhaps because of her
reported dress and occupation, much of the testimony that had been gath-
ered since Bishop’s hearing and which was now to be presented to the Court
of Oyer and Terminer suggested a certain concern with Bishop as a provo-
cateur. William Stacey, for example, presumably the same person who
charged her with stealing from Thomas Stacey in 1688, deposed on May 30
that when he was twenty-two years old, some fourteen years earlier, he had
come to admire Bishop, largely because of the extraordinary love she had
professed for him when she cared for him while he had smallpox.24
Later, however, Stacey overheard considerable malicious gossip concern-
ing Bishop, including the accusation that she was a witch. Bishop had tried
to discourage him from paying any attention to that gossip, but he began to
experience some inexplicable mishaps. Money given to him by Bishop dis-
appeared from his pockets, and his wagon wheel sank in a hole, only to
have the hole disappear when he climbed down to free it. In another
instance, as he approached his barn, Stacey “was suddenly taken and hoisted
from the ground and thrown against a stone wall [and] after that taken up
again and thrown down a bank at the end of his house.”25
Stacey told the court that he believed Bishop was responsible in 1690 for
killing his daughter, who had thrived but suddenly been taken ill and died.
And he revealed that Bishop’s specter had visited him in his bedchamber and
kissed him while he slept. Her lips pressed so hard against his and were so
cold, he reported, that he awoke and sat upright on the bed. Bishop,
wearing a black hat and red coat, sat at the foot of the bed, and it suddenly
became as light as day. She then hopped from the bed, about the room, and
out, whereupon darkness returned. When Stacey reported this incident to
others, Bishop confronted him and asked him if what she had heard con-
cerning his story was true. Stacey insisted it was. He dared her to deny it,
and, although she grew even angrier, she did not.26
Similar reports of nocturnal visits were made by John Cook, Richard
Coman, and John (Jack) Louder. Cook, age eighteen, testified that one
morning five or six years earlier, Bishop had appeared in his chamber by the
window. She looked at him and grinned, but then struck him on the side of
the head, “which did very much hurt,” and disappeared through “a little
crevice [under the window] about so big as I could thrust my hand into.”
Later that day, the Sabbath, Cook continued, Bishop reappeared, and as she
walked across the room an apple that he was holding flew out of his hand
into his mother’s lap. His mother, who sat some six or eight feet away, and
several others present, however, did not see Bishop.27
Coman, age thirty-two, deposed that eight years earlier, while he was in
bed with his wife, he was awakened by Bishop’s entering the room with two
strange women. Bishop, dressed in the “red paragon bodice” that had been
attributed to her, sat on his chest and so oppressed him that he could neither
speak nor stir, not even to awaken his wife. The next night, the three
women reappeared, and Bishop “took hold of him by the throat and almost
hauled him out of the bed.” They reappeared on the third night, but this
time Coman had asked his kinsman William Coman to keep a vigil with
him. One of the three spectral visitors grabbed Richard’s sword, with which
he hoped to defend himself, but he would not let it go. He called to William,
his wife, and another visitor, Sarah Phillips, and they all heard him but
could neither see the specters nor even stir until they had disappeared.28
That Bishop appeared so wantonly to these men was one thing; that she
responded to their rejection of her as she did was quite another. When they
repelled her advances, the men reported, their children paid the price.
Coman reported that during one such visit by Bishop, she had approached
the cradle of a sleeping child nearby with something in her hands, where-
upon the child “gave a great screech.” Soon thereafter, the child died, as did
Stacey’s daughter.29
John Louder, also age thirty-two and John Gedney’s servant, told the
Court that about seven or eight years earlier he had had a quarrel with
Bishop over some of her fowl that had strayed into the Gedney orchard or
garden. Soon thereafter, in the “dead of the night,” Louder felt “a great
weight” upon his breast. It was Bridget Bishop, or her likeness, and when he
tried to push her off, she grabbed Louder by the throat and almost choked
him to death. He explained, “I had no strength or power in my hands to
resist or help myself.”30
Susannah Gedney, Louder’s mistress, and Louder confronted Bishop.
Bishop denied the accusation, however, and threatened Louder. Sometime
after, Louder, not feeling well and staying home on the Sabbath with the
doors shut, saw a black pig in the room, coming toward him. He kicked at
it, and it disappeared. Still later, “a black thing” with a body that looked
like a monkey but “with the feet of a cock and a face of a man” jumped in
Louder’s window. The visitor told Louder that he had been sent to tell him
that if he would “be ruled by him, he should want for nothing in this
world.” Louder indignantly responded that he would kill the intruder. He
struck it, but “could feel no substance,” and it jumped out of the window. It
re-entered by the porch, though the doors remained shut, and said, “You
had better take my counsel,” whereupon Louder struck at it again and met
no corporeal resistance. The figure vanished, not to return, but when he
opened the door, he saw Bridget Bishop in her orchard walking toward her
house. Seeing her, he “had no power to set one foot forward” in pursuit.31
Samuel and Sarah Shattuck added a charge of murder to Bishop’s list of
crimes. They told the Court that beginning in 1680 – the year she first faced
witchcraft charges – Bishop had often visited them for “very slight reasons”
and always “in a smooth flattering manner.” With the increasing frequency
of Bishop’s visits, their eldest son grew progressively ill. He often fell onto
the floor or ground, “as if he had been thrust out by an invisible hand,”
doing even further harm to himself, and in time he declined to the point
where he was “stupefied and void of reason.” The Shattucks began to
believe that their son suffered from “some enchantment,” a diagnosis con-
firmed by a stranger who also found him “bewitched” and declared “a
neighbor that lives not far off” responsible. When he said the witch was one
with whom the Shattucks had quarreled, they recalled having once had such
a disagreement with Bridget Bishop.32
The Shattucks and the stranger devised a test whereby Bishop’s culp-
ability would be determined. The Shattuck’s son would take the stranger to
Bridget Bishop’s tavern, ostensibly to buy a pint of cider. While there, the
stranger would “fetch blood of her” for an occult test, about which the
records offer little information. When the two knocked on her door, how-
ever, Bishop immediately sensed a trap, chased the stranger away with a
spade, and scratched the boy’s face, calling him a rogue and accusing him of
bringing strangers to plague her. Thereafter, the boy’s condition grew worse
yet, and local physicians were forced to conclude that he was “under an evil
hand of witchcraft.”33
Deliverance Hobbs, who had since Bishop’s hearing turned informer, and
the girls added to the new evidence as well. Hobbs reported that while she
was a witch, she had seen Bridget Bishop help administer the sacrament on
the witches’ Sabbath, and that after she herself had confessed, Bishop’s
specter had beaten her with iron rods in an attempt to get her to recant.
Mary Warren and Susannah Sheldon, who had already done much to con-
demn Bishop, simply demonstrated their support for all they heard, includ-
ing charges that Bishop had murdered several children. Sheldon added that
she had seen Bishop suckle her familiar, a snake.34
As was common procedure, Bridget Bishop’s house had been thoroughly
searched, and poppets stuck with pins had been found in the cellar. John
and William Bly testified that Edward and Bridget Bishop had hired them to
remove a cellar wall in a house in which she had once lived, and that they
had found therein several poppets “made up of rags and hogs bristles with
headless pins in them with the points outward.” When confronted with this
evidence, the records show, Bishop had no explanation that was “reasonable
and tolerable.” A surgeon and eight women examined her for witch marks,
twice – just before and right after the trial – in the first instance finding a
“preternatural excrescence of flesh between the pudendum and anus much
like a witch’s teat,” in the latter discovering that it had disappeared.35
We do not know for certain what Bridget Bishop had to say in her
defense. Her stepson Edward Bishop and Edward’s wife Sarah attacked the
credibility of the girls, especially Mary Warren, who, they told the Court,
while in Salem Prison had frequently contradicted statements she had made
to the magistrates at Bridget’s hearing.36 The judges of the Court of Oyer
and Terminer, however, were aware of Mary Warren’s travails, and they
were not tempted to place much emphasis on any equivocation on her part.
Thus, the case was sent to the jury. As part of his jury instruction,
Stoughton explained that Bishop had been charged with five counts of
witchcraft, against Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Mary
Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard. But, he continued, according to Robert
Calef, a guilty verdict did not require that the prosecution prove that the five
actually suffered the torments of which they complained – that they had
actually been consumed, wasted, and tormented – but rather, that they had
not suffered from their afflictions “naturally”! That is to say, if Calef’s
account is correct, the jury could assume that the afflictions were genuine
and could merely decide whether they were natural or not. If not, given the
testimony, the accused were to be found guilty.37
The jury quickly returned a guilty verdict, and the judges sentenced
Bridget Bishop to be hanged, but a legal problem arose to delay her execu-
tion. The General Court, which had only just convened, following imple-
mentation of the new charter, still had not adopted those laws passed by the
Legislature under the previous, now nullified, charter, including that
wherein witchcraft was made a capital crime, punishable by death. It did so
on June 8, and the sentence was reinstated.38
Two days later, Bridget Bishop earned the dubious distinction of being
the first of the accused of the Salem witch trials to be hanged. Sheriff George
Corwin took Bishop to the top of what has variously been called Gallows
Hill or Witches’ Hill, described as a barren and rocky elevation on the
western side of town. A hood was probably placed over her head, and she
was hanged “from the branches of a great oak tree.” Although the records
do not indicate it, a brief sermon was most likely offered, drawing lessons
from the tragic affair for those assembled. The minister in attendance
probably exhorted Bishop one last time to confess and repent, but he likely
did not offer any prayers specifically for Bishop. The records show that fol-
lowing her execution her body was thrown into a pit or hastily dug grave,
which was refilled and left unmarked.39
Although meriting our attention because it was the first, the case of
Bridget Bishop may not have been representative. As one historian has said,
“Bridget Bishop was too special a case, too marked a character, for her fate
to govern the fate of all the rest.”40 Quite different, although she suffered the
same fate, was Rebecca Nurse. Nurse’s case, however, was delayed until
June 28. In the meantime, the number of the accused awaiting trial con-
tinued to grow. This the general public could see and no doubt wonder
about. What they did not know was that the Court had divided over the use
of spectral evidence in the Bishop case, and that it could not proceed against
Nurse until the matter was resolved.
At least one member of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Nathaniel
Saltonstall, was troubled by the fact that Bridget Bishop had been con-
demned almost exclusively on the basis of spectral evidence. Had the use of
such evidence been limited, he and others believed Bishop’s behavior would
not have merited conviction for witchcraft and execution. An authoritative
unequivocal statement on the matter was needed. Governor Phips was
seldom in town, continuing to deal with matters on the frontier, and even if
he had been present it is unlikely that he had the educational preparation
either in law or theology to provide such a statement. On June 13, he met
with his Council and four of the court’s judges to discuss the court’s pro-
ceedings thus far. As it would take too long to write to England for advice,
he opted instead to seek further guidance from leaders of the New England
ministry.41
On June 15, twelve Boston area ministers, including Samuel Willard and
Increase Mather, met to prepare a response to the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner. Serving as their amanuensis was Cotton Mather. In the way of a
preamble to “Return of the Several Ministers,” the ministerial committee
expressed sympathy for those who had suffered “by molestations from the
invisible world.” It issued “a very critical and exquisite caution, lest by too
much credulity of things received only upon the Devil’s authority there be a
door opened for a long train of miserable consequences.” The ministers
voiced their concern with the boisterous and disruptive outburst of the
afflicted and urged that future proceedings be “managed with an exceeding
tenderness” toward those who might be charged, especially if they were
persons formerly of “unblemished reputation.”42
Addressing the specific issue of evidence, the ministers, much as Cotton
Mather had done earlier, warned that spectral evidence should be handled
with care, especially, in a most crucial allowance, because the “demon may
assume the shape of the innocent.” Conviction, they continued, should be
based upon evidence “certainly more considerable than barely the accused
person being represented by a specter unto the afflicted.” Even the touch
test, the ministers added, was not infallible. It too was liable to be abused
by “the Devil’s legerdemain.” Nevertheless, the ministers thanked colonial
authorities for their “sedulous and assiduous endeavors” in ferreting out the
culprits and recommended that the proceedings be vigorously pursued.43
The ministers provided the Court of Oyer and Terminer with their
statement in the form of a confidential memorandum. It differed from the
advice offered by Cotton Mather to John Richards, only in a few particulars
and in tone. Whereas previously Mather had approved of tests, such as that
of the Lord’s Prayer, for example, he and the other ministers now warned
that they could be cunning devices used by the Devil to deceive the Court.
And although in his earlier letter Mather had struck a note of caution in his
instructions to the Court, the tone of the second document was even more cau-
tionary. It nevertheless concluded with words in response to which the Court
would take refuge and not change its ways. All previous criticism notwith-
standing, the ministers recommended “unto the government the speedy and
vigorous prosecution of such as have rendered themselves obnoxious, according
to the direction given in the laws of God, and the wholesome statutes of the
English nation, for the detection of witchcrafts.”44
In sum, despite its many sound points, the document was less than decisive.
Indeed, it was equivocal to the extent that the judges were free to interpret it
as they wished. Perhaps the ministers were themselves uncertain about the
guilt or innocence of the accused or about the height or depth to which the
trials had reached. Maybe, as the opening words of caution suggest, they saw
those of a previously unblemished reputation as being innocent, but others as
being guilty, thereby reflecting a prejudicial double standard with which the
Court came to be charged. But it was not the document for which some had
hoped.
On June 25, Boston’s Baptist ministers wrote to Phips and his Council,
sending two petitions complaining about the use of spectral evidence,
warning that “several persons of good fame and unspoiled reputations”
had been arrested based solely on spectral evidence. The unsolicited mis-
sive, however, was denounced as “scandalous and seditious,” and “The
Return of Several Ministers Consulted” was forwarded to the judges to be
used at their discretion. And despite its note of caution, the judges read
into this memorandum confirmation of what they had already done, or of
the procedures they had adopted in trying Bridget Bishop. Stoughton
clearly took this position, and it would seem that he carried the rest of the
Court with him. Nathaniel Saltonstall remained the sole dissenter, and he
resigned from the Court.45
Saltonstall’s resignation is not surprising, as he had agreed to participate
with reluctance in the first place. The previous March he had excused him-
self from the Essex County Court, when it heard the case of Rachel Clinton,
and he had refused to sign the witchcraft charges brought against three
Haverhill women. It is probably not a coincidence that after his resignation
from the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Saltonstall took to heavy drinking.
Moreover, the girls, perhaps sensing the reason for his resignation, which
was not made public, began to cry out against him and to report that they
had seen him, or his specter, under incriminating circumstances. He was
never charged, however.46
The Court Completes Its First Session

When the Court of Oyer and Terminer reconvened on June 28, it heard the
cases of Sarah Good, Sarah Wilds, Elizabeth How, Susannah Martin, and
Rebecca Nurse. It was expected that Sarah Good would be quickly con-
demned, and she was, although someone did step forward to defend her,
albeit unintentionally. During her trial, one of the girls accused Good of
attacking her with a knife; she even produced a part of the blade that was
used against her, the knife having been broken in the attack. The evidence
seemed quite conclusive until a young man stepped forward out of those in
attendance. He recognized the blade as that which had broken off his own
knife the previous day and which he had thrown away in the presence of the
afflicted, whereupon he produced the matching other part. Tellingly,
although the girl seems to have made no attempt to contradict the young
man’s story, the judge merely reprimanded her for lying, told her to stick to
the facts, and then let her continue to testify.47
Elizabeth How was less suspect than was Sarah Good, but the Court did
not labor much longer in her case. How’s two daughters and her husband
remained faithful to her, as did a few friends, some of whom were promi-
nent in the community. Deacon Ingersoll of Salem village, for example, was
willing to testify about her good character, as were the ministers of Rowley,
who had even revealed the source of much of the gossip about How. Most
of that gossip reflected previous suspicions of witchcraft, which, although
malicious, was not relevant to the case made against her. As with others of
the accused, however, there were types of evidence that were germane and
unassailable, namely that of the girls, and How was duly convicted.48
The testimony in Sarah Wilds’s case was mixed. Some reported that she was
capable of outbursts of temper when she felt she had been wronged and that
mayhem often followed. Others testified that they had seen no such behavior
on her part. But as with the others, the negative testimony fit that brought by
the afflicted, so Wilds too was condemned, as was Susannah Martin.49
Marion Starkey has described Susannah Martin as “every inch a witch,
bright of eye, salty of tongue, and the central figure of every marvellous
event that had happened in Amesbury for going on three decades.” She had
been formally charged with being a witch as far back as 1669. It seems she
had bewitched a neighbor, but for some unknown reason she was never put
on trial. At her preliminary hearing, Martin displayed contempt for the
Court and ridicule for the afflicted, and when the girls who accused her
burst forth in pain, she startled the Court by laughing! “Well may I laugh at
such folly,” she said when the magistrates reproved her. “What do you think
ails them?” they asked when Martin denied hurting them, to which she only
shrugged and said, “I don’t desire to spend my judgment on it.” “Don’t you
think they are bewitched?” the magistrates persisted, to which she answered,
“No, I do not think they are. If they be dealing with the black arts, you may
know as well as I.”50
The magistrates directed Martin to touch the afflicted so the Devil might
be drawn from them, and he was, but Martin was not impressed. Instead,
when confronted with her various alleged diabolical deeds, she commented,
“He that appeared in the shape of Samuel, a glorified saint, may appear in
anyone’s shape.” She was referring, of course, as the magistrates, ministers,
and better-educated individuals knew, to the Witch of Endor, who had
caused the shape of Samuel to appear before Saul. Her meaning, they also
knew, was that the Bible itself (1 Sam. 28) seemed by this scene to make it
clear that the Devil could assume the specter of an innocent person, much as
he had her.51
The charges against Martin seem minor when compared to those brought
against others, like Rebecca Nurse. She had done no real harm except to
scare some people half to death. Mostly she was charged with committing
several pranks, including causing the death of John Allen’s oxen, but no
murders. But neither did she exhibit any remorse or concern for what others
thought of her. Cotton Mather merely verbalized what no doubt many others
were thinking when he wrote: “This woman was one of the most impudent,
scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world,” and what made it even worse was
that when asked what she had to say for herself, she had had the audacity to
reply “that she had led a virtuous and holy life.”52 That was pretty much the
case for the three decades she had been under suspicion, but in the end that did
not matter. She had been an unpleasant person, perhaps even a dangerous
person to cross, and the judges believed she had afflicted the girls of Salem vil-
lage. Therefore, she was condemned her along with the others.
As we have already seen, Rebecca Nurse’s was among the most troubling
of the preliminary hearings, and it would prove to be among the most diffi-
cult cases for the Court of Oyer and Terminer. It may have been the result
of Nurse’s good reputation; it may also have been the jury’s response to the
ministers’ document on spectral evidence, or both. The charges brought
against Nurse were formidable. Since her preliminary hearing, Ann Putnam,
Sr. had testified that Nurse had visited her on several occasions, afflicted her
and pressed her to sign the book. Nurse had told her during one visit that
she had killed Benjamin Houlton, John Fuller, and Rebecca Shepard, and
that she and her sister Sarah Cloyce had killed John Putnam’s child, as well.
Putnam continued:
Immediately there did appear to me six children in winding-sheets,

which called me aunt, which did most grievously affright me; and they
told me that they were my sister Baker’s children of Boston; and that
Goody Nurse and Mistress Cary of Charlestown, and an old deaf
women at Boston, had murdered them, and charged me to go and tell
these things to the magistrates, or else they would tear me to pieces, for
their blood did cry for vengeance. Also there appeared to me my own
sister Bayley and three of her children in winding-sheets and told me
that Goody Nurse had murdered them.53
Mary Walcott and Abigail Williams charged Nurse with having committed
several murders, assisted in three instances by Sarah Cloyce. Sarah Houlton
offered that three years earlier Nurse had killed her husband in retaliation
for his not preventing his hogs from trampling her garden. Upon that occa-
sion, despite all Houlton’s attempts to pacify her, Nurse “continued railing
and scolding a great while together,” calling to her son Benjamin to get a
gun and kill his pigs and let none out of the field. Shortly thereafter, Sarah
Houlton continued, upon his return from an early morning venture out of
doors, Benjamin Holton “was taken with a strange fit … struck blind and
stricken down two or three times, so that when he came to himself, he told
me he thought he should never have come into the house anymore.” He
languished for the rest of the summer, “being much pained in his stomach,
and often struck blind,” and then he died. About two weeks before he died,
Houlton added, her husband “was taken with strange and violent fits, acting
much like our poor bewitched persons when we thought they would have
died,” and the doctor could not find any physical cause for the malady. In
the end, she concluded, “he departed this life by a cruel death.”54
Only a few days before her trial, Nurse was found to have a witch’s teat.
On June 28, however, Nurse wrote to the judges of the Court of Oyer and
Terminer calling to their attention the dissenting vote cast on that occasion
by one of the women who was “known to be the most ancient, skilful,
prudent person of them all.” She had found nothing, Nurse reported, “but
what might arise from a natural cause.” Although hers was the sole dissenting
voice, Nurse petitioned the Court to order a second examination, employing
women that were “most grave, wise, and skilful,” but the Court did not
honor Nurse’s request.55
Much of the evidence used against Rebecca Nurse was spectral, and as we
have seen, that was exactly the kind of evidence the Massachusetts ministers
had suggested be treated with “exquisite caution.” Further, the minsters had
urged the Court to exercise “exceeding tenderness” toward those “persons
formerly of an unblemished reputation.” Not only did Rebecca Nurse have
an unblemished reputation, but her husband Francis brought to court peti-
tions signed by thirty-nine village residents attesting to her upstanding
character, including Porters and Putnams, although not Thomas and Ann
Putnam. The petition attested to Nurse’s having led “her life and conversa-
tion … according to her profession [of faith],” and to the fact that they had
never had “any cause or grounds to suspect her of anything as she is now
accused.”56
In a separate document, even Nathaniel Putnam Sr. testified that in the
forty years he had known Nurse, “her human frailties excepted,” her life
and conversation had been “according to her profession,” and that she had
raised “a great family of children” and had educated them well, so that
“there is in some of them apparent savor of godliness.” He had known her
to “differ with her neighbors,” Putnam continued, but he “never knew or
heard of any that did accuse her” of being a witch.57
For a brief time, the behavior of the children in court was suspect. At one
point, in response to the children’s demonstrating affliction in Nurse’s pre-
sence, Sarah Nurse, Rebecca’s daughter, came forward to explain that she
had seen Sarah Bibber inflict her own pain. When Bibber cried out, Sarah
Nurse said she saw Bibber pull pins from her clothes and hold them between
her fingers and then clasp both hands around her knees, crying as she did
that Nurse had pinched her.58
The jury took all of this into consideration and returned a not guilty
verdict. At that moment, any courtroom decorum that may have existed
collapsed into bedlam. The girls roared in pain and their bodies jerked and
spasmed in what one historian has described as an “unearthly choreo-
graphy.” The judges and jury members were no doubt stunned, while the
packed house was divided between those, probably a minority, who were
thrilled by the verdict and many more who were outraged.59
Chief Justice Stoughton, characteristically, took control. “I will not impose
on the jury,” he began in addressing Thomas Fisk, jury foreman, “but I must
ask you if you considered one statement made by the prisoner.” Stoughton
referred to the response Nurse had offered when Deliverance Hobbs and her
daughter, both of whom had confessed to their guilt, were brought into court
to testify, namely: “What do these persons give in evidence against me now?
They used to come among us.” Fisk could not answer the question. He
explained that several jurymen were willing to deliberate further, but that upon
their leave they “could not tell how to take her words … till she had a further
opportunity to put her sense upon them.”60
Stoughton asked Nurse to explain herself. Nurse, by all reports, oblivious
not only to what was going on around her but even to he who stood before
her and asked her about the statement, made no reply. She later explained
that being “hard of hearing and full of grief” she had not realized that she
had been addressed. She simply stared ahead as if in a trance, her mouth
silently working as if in prayer. This time the jury, no doubt both suspicious
of Nurse’s failure to respond and wary of the effect their initial verdict had
had on the girls, reversed itself. It assumed that by saying that Hobbs “used
to come among us,” Nurse had admitted that she had seen Hobbs at a wit-
ches’ Sabbath, and it pronounced Nurse guilty as charged.61
Since she was a member of the Salem town church, there was still another
step to be taken. Nurse must be cast out, or excommunicated. Nicholas
Noyes, assistant pastor of the town church, but to whom, because of John
Higginson’s advanced age, most of the work had accrued, moved swiftly.
The ceremony took place on July 3, the first Sabbath after Nurse’s con-
demnation. Nurse, who had collapsed after her trial, was carried into the
meetinghouse in a chair. Both Noyes and Higginson entered the pulpit, and
the two deacons and the ruling elders sat before them. Noyes read the sen-
tence of the congregation to her. Acting on God’s behalf, the members of
God’s church, by denying her access to his church, condemned Nurse to
eternal damnation.62
If the rest of the community accepted Rebecca Nurse’s condemnation,
however, her family did not. They went to Boston to visit Governor Phips.
Phips agreed to meet with them, and they provided him with a summary of
the Court’s proceedings and a number of other documents, including: the
petition of those who had spoken in her favor; their view of the jury’s highly
unusual reconsideration and reversal of their initial verdict; their explana-
tion of Rebecca’s silence when asked to explain herself; a challenge to Deli-
verance Hobbs’s right to testify, being a fellow prisoner; and Rebecca’s
appeal for a second physical examination to clarify the disputed evidence of
the witch’s teat discovered in the first examination.63
Clearly moved by what he read and heard, Phips signed a reprieve for
Rebecca Nurse, but it was met with an uproar of opposition. Immedi-
ately upon his having issued the reprieve and Nurse’s release, the girls
were once again afflicted. Some of them were dying, it was reported, and
if they died the governor would be held responsible. Phips recalled his
reprieve and left once again to fight the enemies he understood on the
northern frontier.64
The First Mass Execution and Its Effects

The stage was set for the most dramatic day thus far in the history of the
Salem witch trials. On Tuesday, July 19, 1692, the first mass execution of
witches occurred. Sarah Good, Elizabeth How, Sarah Wilds, Susannah
Martin, and Rebecca Nurse were hanged on Gallows Hill. Many of the
residents of Salem town were in attendance, as was common for such public
acts of discipline, and it was an appropriately solemn occasion – with one
exception. Sarah Good would not go quietly.65
When the Reverend Noyes made one last appeal to her to confess and
save her soul, insisting that she was a witch, Good responded, drawing from
Revelations 16:6: “You’re a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a
wizard! If you take my life away, God will give you blood to drink.” Good
was hanged, nonetheless, but some believe her prophecy came true, when,
years later, Noyes died of a hemorrhage. Perhaps Good’s words came back
to haunt him in his final moments.66
The bodies of the witches were buried in a shallow grave on Gallows
Hill; they could not be interred in a sacred graveyard. The children of
Rebecca Nurse, however, so the story goes, returned that night, dug up the
body, and took it home. No one knows where they buried Rebecca; no one
outside of the family would be told. Years later, however, a granite marker
was erected for her under a tree on the Nurse’s property. Another marker
was erected nearby honoring all who had defended her in a day when to do
so was to jeopardize their own lives.67
It should be noted that the executions of July 19 had a profound effect on
the other accused awaiting trial. If people such as Rebecca Nurse, with all of
the support she seemed to have in the community, could be executed, what
chance did they have to escape the hangman’s noose? And perhaps symbo-
lically, but in a development the impact of which could not have been
missed by all of those concerned with the course of events in Salem, in July,
with the witchcraft fervor at its height, a special election was held in Salem
town. Daniel Andrew and Philip English, not surprisingly, as well as
Timothy Lindall and two other selectmen associated with the Porters were
voted out of office. Five new men (four of whom had never served in that
office before) took their place. The moderator of the election was John
Putnam. The counterattack had reached its greatest point.68
Most, if not all, of those facing trial no doubt despaired of their fate.
Those who could, took fate into their own hands, and flights from the law
began. Nathaniel Cary smuggled his wife from prison and escaped to New
York. Edward and Sarah Bishop fled, but it is not known where. Philip and
Mary English resisted almost until the day of their trial, but then they too
left for New York. And John Alden disappeared. In all, Larry Gragg found
that thirteen individuals had escaped, seven men and six women, five from
Salem and eight from seven other communities.69
Four points should be added in reference to those who escaped prosecu-
tion. First, it was quite likely the conduct of the Court of Oyer and Termi-
ner in its first session that precipitated their flight. Second, although Alden,
Andrew, Cary, and the Englishes were prominent among the fugitives, and
although another escapee, Dudley Bradstreet, was a man of wealth, as many
others maintained a decidedly lower public profile and were of modest
means. Dudley had signed warrants for the arrest of forty of the Andover
accused only to have a change of heart when he, his wife, and his brother
were cried out against. Third, given the less than physically secure nature of
most prisons, as well as the absence of systematic supervision, it is surpris-
ing that even more did not escape. Obviously, some prisoners were more
closely guarded or physically unable to flee, but other factors kept the
number down. Some believed that running would be an admission of guilt,
and at least until January 1693, confession afforded a safer way of avoiding
execution.70
Fourth, it is interesting, but perhaps not especially surprising, that
although there was much talk about the escapees, the judges made little
effort to pursue those fugitives who fled beyond their immediate jurisdiction.
Extradition from one British colony to another was legally possible, but
unless it was attempted secretly there is no record that it was even tried.
This led Thomas Brattle to charge that the Carys, Alden, and the Englishes
had not been pursued because of their status. Rather than prompt the Court
to action, Brattle intended his comments to ridicule the proceedings as a
whole. And, although only true in part (the Court did not seek to extradite
those of lesser means, either), his charges did lend substance to a message that
was gaining support in many quarters. People were beginning to believe that
being rich, wellborn, and powerful not only protected some from the charges
made against them, but also that if formally charged, it would be sufficient to
ensure that they would never be tried, much less executed. Execution, it was
believed, would be the fate of those of lesser wealth, birth, and power.71
Notes
6 Quoted in Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 134.
9 See Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3.
10 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 84; Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft:
The Salem Trails and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2015), 24.
11 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, ed. Bernard Rosenthal (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2014), 686.
322; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World (1700), in George Lin-
coln Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York:
13 Quoted in Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York: George Braziller,
1969), 122; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 86; Charles Upham, Salem Witch-
craft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 256.
14 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 322; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 86–87.
16 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts
Bay (1764), Lawrence Shaw Mayo, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1936), 32; Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem, 122.
18 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 26–27; Cotton Mather, Selected Letters of Cotton
Mather, ed. Kenneth Silverman (Baton Rouge, LA: University of Louisiana Press,
1971), 36–39.
20 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 255. Margaret Thatcher was among those accused
of witchcraft.
21 David T. Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629–
1692 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 172; Gragg,
The Salem Witch Crisis, 88–89.
setts, 153.
23 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 183–186; Cotton Mather, The Wonders of the
Invisible World (1693) in George Lincoln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft
Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 229; Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II: 257.
372.
259–260.
35 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 371, 362–363.
37 Calef, More Wonders, 187–188.
39 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts
of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692 (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1977), I: 24; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 156; Upham,
Salem Witchcraft, II: 267.
42 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 157; Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in
Colonial New England (Boston, MA: Boston University Press, 1993), 117–118.
43 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft, 118.
44 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft, 117–118.
45 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 158; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 30.
46 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 158; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 87, 191.
50 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 170–171; Records of the Salem Witch-
Hunt, 228–231.
52 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 228–231; Mather, The Wonders, 236.
54 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 379, 142–143, 427–428, 359; Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II: 275, 281–282.
59 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 160; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 283–284.
Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 132.
70 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 137; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 142–143.
8 “What a Sad Thing It Is to See Eight
Firebrands of Hell Hanging There”
Having successfully withstood the challenge posed by the pious and highly
regarded Rebecca Nurse, the Court of Oyer and Terminer reconvened on
August 2 to face six more defendants: George Burroughs, John and Elizabeth
Procter, George Jacobs Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier. Burroughs and
Procter challenged the court in different yet powerful ways, but both failed.
All six were condemned and, with the exception of Elizabeth Procter, all were
executed two weeks later.
The Case of George Burroughs

As was the case in many of the trials, most of the evidence used against Bur-
roughs was gathered from his preliminary hearing. Yet again, witnesses testified
to the amazing feats of strength the little man had performed. He had held out a
gun with a seven-foot barrel with one finger stuck in the muzzle, it was recalled,
and he had carried a barrel full of cider with only one finger stuck in the opening
(the details varied with each telling). Burroughs responded that such incidents
had been much exaggerated. He added that an Indian had done much the same
thing, but perhaps that was not a wise comparison for him to make, because his
accusers soon pointed out that Burroughs was not only “the Black Man,” but
that he also looked like an Indian.1
Witnesses again testified that Burroughs had been known to travel from
place to place in a shorter time than was humanly possible, without the
assistance of the Devil. Burroughs pointed out that upon the occasion cited
another man had accompanied him, only to have his accusers suggest that
the other person must have been the Devil. Additional depositions were
offered attesting to Burroughs’s “unkindness,” or abusive treatment, of his
wife. The Court heard of his wife’s laments to neighbors that Burroughs
would not let her write to her father, and that she suspected him of dealing
with, or at least having direct knowledge of, evil spirits. And there was the
suspicion that Burroughs had preternatural knowledge of conversations that
took place in his absence. On August 5, Burroughs’s brother-in-law entered
a deposition to the court that he had witnessed Burroughs demonstrating
such knowledge during a strawberry-picking expedition.2
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-9
“What a Sad Thing It Is to See …” 183
As the mid-eighteenth-century historian Thomas Hutchinson said: “Upon
the whole, he [Burroughs] was confounded, and used many twistings and
turnings, which, I think, we cannot wonder at.”3 Cotton Mather recorded
one such “twisting and turning” at the hands of Chief Justice Stoughton and
upon the failure of several of the afflicted to bear witness in George Burroughs’s
presence:
The chief justice asked the prisoner who he thought hindered these
witnesses from giving their testimonies; and he answered, he supposed it
was the Devil. The honorable person then replied, “How comes the
Devil so loath to have any testimony borne against you?” Which cast
him into very great confusion.4
George Burroughs was not an entirely passive victim. He came to court pre-
pared to defend himself. He called into question a concept central to the defini-
tion of witchcraft itself. In a written statement he presented to the jury, he wrote
that “there neither are nor ever were witches that having a compact with the
Devil can send a devil to torment other people at a distance.” We do not know
the judges’ response to Burroughs’s statement, but we can well imagine what it
was. We do know that the jury was not impressed. Neither was Cotton Mather,
who determined that the statement had been taken from A Candle in the Dark
(1656), written following the witch-hunt of the 1640s by Thomas Ady, an Eng-
lish skeptic.5
The jury was more impressed by the tooth marks the afflicted girls showed
them, testifying that Burroughs’s specter had bitten them only the night before.
To prove the case, the judges had Burroughs’s mouth pried open, and upon
close inspection of his teeth as well as those of others in the courtroom, they
declared that indeed his teeth were responsible for the marks. The jury no
doubt recalled testimony that Burroughs had tried to seduce the girls into
witchcraft by offering them fine clothes, and that he had told them of his plan
to pervert the whole of Salem village. Having revealed so much to them, only to
have them resist his entreaties, the court reasoned, Burroughs had no choice but
to act to silence them. Burroughs, considered by some as “the ringleader” of the
Salem witches, was condemned.6
The Procters Are Condemned

On July 23, two weeks before he arrived in court, John Procter took the offen-
sive by having delivered to five Boston area ministers a petition on his behalf and
on behalf of others of the accused. In that petition, Procter urged the ministers
to use their authority to have the cases moved from Salem to the Boston area, or
failing that, to have the judges replaced by others. The sitting members, he
explained, had already condemned them, their being “so much enraged and
incensed against us by the Devil.” The petition, it will be recalled, also alleged
the use of torture in eliciting confessions from some of the accused.7
184 “What a Sad Thing It Is to See …”
The direct results of the Procters’ petition, at least in the short run, were
no doubt disappointing. The petition was sent to the Reverends Joshua
Moody and Samuel Willard, both of whom had displayed some sympathy
for the accused, as well as to the Reverends James Allen, John Bayley, and
Increase Mather. None took any immediate action. Perhaps Moody and
Willard remained cautious despite their already well-known opposition to the
trials. Further, although there are indications that he was beginning to grow
uneasy with the course of events, Increase Mather was still recouping his lost
fortune among the general population for his role in the writing of the new
colonial charter. In time, Moody and Willard did act decisively in opposition to
the trials, and Mather did investigate Procter’s allegations of torture, but if they
did anything at the time, it did not alter John Procter’s fate.8
Indirectly, two developments might well have resulted at least in part from
John Procter’s petition. First, apparently in retaliation, Procter’s relatives in
Lynn were immediately cried out against and arrested.9 Second, Increase
Mather decided to visit Salem to see for himself how the trials were conducted.
He witnessed the trial of George Burroughs, but his observations after the trial
ended, as we shall see, were less than supportive to the defendant’s cause.
A few days before their trial, two additional petitions were offered to the
Court of Oyer and Terminer on behalf of John and Elizabeth Procter. In one
petition, thirty-one residents of Ipswich, and in the second, twenty others
who lived nearby, attested to the Procters’ good conduct. In the first,
apparently written by the Reverend John Wise of Ipswich, the signatories
explained that out of charity, whereby they should “do as [they] would be
done by,” they had decided to do what they could to clear their neighbors’
names. They noted that they had come to suppose that “it may be a
method within the severer but just transactions of the infinite majesty of
God, that He sometimes may permit Satan to personate, dissemble, and
thereby abuse innocents.” Therefore, they testified to the innocence of their
neighbors. They reported that they “never had the least knowledge of such
a nefarious wickedness in our said neighbors, since they have been within
our acquaintance”:
Neither do we remember any such thoughts in us concerning them, or

any action by them or either of them, directly tending that way, no
more than might be in the lives of any other persons of the clearest
reputations as to any such evils. What God may have left them to, we
cannot go into God’s pavilion clothed with clouds of darkness round
about, but, as to what we have ever seen or heard of them, upon our
consciences we judge them innocent of the crime objected.10
In the second statement, the signatories offered a briefer confirming para-

graph, noting that they had no reason to suspect the Procters either, as they
had “lived Christian-like in their family, and were ever ready to help such as
stood in need of their help.”11
Once again, the petition did no good. Neither did the previously mentioned
testimony of the Procters’ servant Mary Warren, which was offered in evidence
at the Procters’ trial. Warren had recanted her testimony against John and
Elizabeth Procter, only to recant her recantation. So in the end, John and Eli-
zabeth Procter were condemned. Elizabeth, however, was pregnant and the
judges granted her a stay of execution until the baby was born.12 As it turned
out, although she gave birth only about two weeks after her scheduled date of
execution, the delay was sufficient to save her life.
The Cases of George Jacobs Sr., John Willard, and Martha Carrier
Once again, nearly all we know of the trials of George Jacobs Sr., John
Willard, and Martha Carrier comes from the records of their preliminary
hearings and pre-trial depositions. Most of that has already been reported,
except for their ultimate fate, at which the reader can likely guess. The
reader will recall the sad tale of Jacobs’s son and daughter-in-law, as well as
the fascinating stories of Jacobs’s servant Sarah Churchill and his grand-
daughter Margaret Jacobs. Sarah, too, had recanted her recantation, and
although Margaret persisted in telling the Court that she had lied, it made
little difference. George Jacobs Sr. was condemned.
At John Willard’s trial, Susannah Sheldon testified that on one occasion,
while at Ingersoll’s ordinary, she had been visited by four apparitions:
“William Shaw’s first wife, the Widow Cook, Goodman Jones and his
child.” Among them came the specter of John Willard, to whom the four
said, “You have murdered us,” whereupon they all “turned as red as blood.”
Turning to Sheldon, the visitors became “as pale as death,” and they
ordered Sheldon to tell Hathorne what she had heard. Willard, however,
pulled a knife, saying that if she did he would cut her throat.13
The apparitions visited Sheldon twice more in the same day, telling much
the same story. Upon their third visit, Sheldon inquired about the locations
of the specters’ wounds. They answered that an angel from heaven would
soon appear and show her, and soon one did. Sheldon asked the angel who
the “shining man” was, and the angel told her his name was Southwick.
Then “the angel lifted up his winding-sheet, and out of his left side he pulled
a pitchfork tine, and put it in again.” Likewise, “he opened all the winding-
sheets [of the others], and showed all their wounds.” And once again, the
angel ordered Sheldon to tell Hathorne what he had told her, and then
vanished. In a second deposition, Sheldon testified that she had seen Willard
“suckle the apparitions of two black pigs on his breasts,” that Willard had
told her that he had been a wizard for twenty years, and that she had wit-
nessed Willard and other wizards and witches kneeling in prayer “to the
black man with a long-crowned hat.” John Willard was sentenced to be
hanged.14
Finally, the Court called Martha Carrier. The Reverend Francis Dane of
Andover appeared in her defense. He told the Court that Carrier had been
the victim of malicious gossip – Cotton Mather called her a “rampant
hag” – but his testimony was suspect. Although he was a minister of God,
three of his female relations had been arrested for witchcraft. Moreover,
there were new depositions to add to the list of those who had already
spoken out against her. Benjamin Abbott testified that in March 1691 he had
had some land granted to him by the town of Andover. The lot, however,
bordered on that of the Carriers, and when Martha concluded that Abbott’s
lot encroached on hers, she was very angry. She said she “would stick as
close to [him] as the bark stuck to the tree,” and that he would “repent of it
afore seven years came to an end.”15
What exactly befell Abbott is unclear, but he did report suffering from a
swollen foot and a pain in his side that “bred to a sore which was lanced by
Dr. Prescott and [from which] several gallons of corruption did run” for
some six weeks. He experienced soreness in his groin, which was treated in
a similar manner but which almost caused his death. He concluded by
noting that Dr. Prescott was never able to cure him, but that once Martha
Carrier was imprisoned he began to heal. As he continued to be in good
health since, he had “great cause to think that the said Carrier had a great
hand” in it all.16
John Rogers deposed that about seven years earlier he had quarreled with
Martha Carrier, his neighbor, at which time “she gave forth several threa-
tening words as she often used to do.” A short time later, two of Rogers’s
“lusty sows” disappeared. Rogers found one dead and with both ears cut
off, near the Carrier’s home, but he never found the other. One of Rogers’s
cows stopped giving milk in the morning, as she formerly had, and produced
only at night.17
And Phoebe Chandler, about twelve years of age, reported that on one
occasion while carrying food to workers in the field, she had heard a voice
she thought was Martha Carrier’s coming from the bushes, asking her what
she was doing there and where she was going. Chandler saw nobody but
was frightened, nonetheless, and ran. Later in the day she made the same
trip and upon returning she heard the same voice, this time saying that she
would be poisoned within two or three days. Soon Phoebe suffered from a
swollen right hand, excruciating pain in her face, and the feeling of “a great
weight” upon her breast and legs.18
The jury returned a guilty verdict in Carrier’s case, and their work on
those first summoned by Thomas Newton was done.
The Hangings of August 19

On August 19, 1692, five more witches, four men and one woman, were
taken to Gallows Hill and hanged. To a person, Thomas Brattle reported,
they forgave their accusers. They also spoke “without reflection on jury and
judges, for bringing them in guilty, and condemning them,” and their words
were “very affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable
spectators.” At the same time, however, they continued to insist that they
were innocent. “The condemned,” Brattle wrote, “went out of the world not
only with as great protestations, but also with as good shows of innocency,
as men could do.” They “declared their wish, that their blood might be the
last innocent blood shed.”19
According to Robert Calef, Cotton Mather was present upon the occasion
of the mass hanging of August 19, and he made record of an incident that
has remained indelibly ingrained in the history of the Salem witch trials,
forever exemplifying in most minds Mather’s zealous role therein. First,
Calef reported, the condemned asked Mather to pray with them. Then
George Burroughs, the “black minister,” climbed the ladder and all eyes
were upon him. He was allowed to speak, and he once again proclaimed his
innocence “with such solemn and serious expressions as were to the
admiration of all present.” He even repeated the Lord’s Prayer – flawlessly!
Indeed, to quote Calef directly, Burroughs’s recitation “was so well worded,
and uttered with such composedness and such (at least seeming) fervency of
spirit, as was very affecting and drew tears from many.”20
Those in attendance were dumbstruck. Was it possible they had con-
demned an innocent man? The moment cried out for an explanation, lest
some lose their resolve and hinder the execution. The accusers, Calef
reported, insisted that another “black man” stood nearby and dictated the
prayer to Burroughs, and then Cotton Mather stepped forward to provide
his explanation. Dressed all in black, Calef reported, Mather rose in
the stirrups upon his horse and addressed the crowd. He began by
declaring that Burroughs was not an ordained minister, a statement based,
most historians agree, on a technicality but nevertheless intended to
counter any last-minute second thoughts on the matter. Further, without
making specific reference to it, he recalled a point made several weeks
earlier by the Reverend Deodat Lawson, namely that “the Devil is never
more subtly himself than when he most appears like an angel of light.”
Burroughs, he explained, was like an angel of light, but he was not what
he appeared to be. The noise of the crowd subsided, Calef continued, and
Burroughs was hanged. Burroughs had been silenced, but his last words
were not forgotten. Even Cotton Mather lived to regret the day, as he
later wrote that he wished he had never heard “the first letters of his
[Burroughs’s] name.”21
The reader should understand that Robert Calef’s account of the August
19 hanging was the only contemporary description that mentioned Mather’s
role in Burroughs’s hanging. Thomas Brattle’s and Samuel Sewall’s, for
example, do not, although in his diary on August 19, 1692, Sewall did write
that Burroughs “by his speech, prayer, and protestation of innocence, did
much move unthinking persons.”22 Given Calef’s hostility toward Mather
and the dramatic nature of the event upon which the others were almost
certain to have commented, Calef’s account must be viewed with some
skepticism. That is not to suggest, however, that Mather was not persuaded
of Burroughs’s guilt. Upon Burroughs’s execution, Mather recorded the
following passage in his diary:
God had been pleased so as to leave this George Burroughs, that he had
ensnared himself by several instances which he had formerly given of
preternatural strength, and which were now produced against him.23
Even his father, Increase – commonly seen as considerably less zealous than
his son, and who had attended Burroughs’s trial – found the evidence against
Burroughs compelling. He concluded that it showed that “the Devil had been
Burroughs’s familiar,” and that if he had been on the jury he would not have
quarreled with their verdict.24
Calef described the hanging of August 19 in the following manner:
When he [Burroughs] was cut down, he was dragged by a halter to a

hole, or grave, between the rocks, about two feet deep; his shirt and
breeches were pulled off, and an old pair of trousers of one executed put
on his lower parts. He was so put in [the grave], together with Willard
and Carrier, that one of his hands and his chin, and a foot of one of
them, were left uncovered.25
Tradition, however, describes a different end for the body of George Jacobs.
According to historian Charles Upham, the body “having been obtained at
the place of execution, was strapped by a young grandson on the back of a
horse, brought home to [his] farm, and buried beneath the shade of his own
trees.” Two “sunken and weather worn stones” marked the spot, Upham
continued, and there Jacobs rested until 1864, when his remains were
exhumed, his identity confirmed, and he was reburied in the same place.26
In the 1950s, when the Jacobs home was abandoned after a series of fires,
George Jacobs was exhumed a final time by the town of Danvers (formerly
Salem village) and put into storage, to be reburied in 1992 in the Rebecca
Nurse graveyard. The stone is decorated with angels’ wings on both sides of
a skull, which was common in the late seventeenth century, and is inscribed
with “Here lies buried the body of George Jacobs Sr., Deceased August the
19th, 1692. Well! Burn me or hang me, I will stand in the truth of Christ.”
The Trials of September: The Cases of Martha Cory and Mary Esty
By the end of August, various witnesses, notably including many of the
accused, testified as to the presence of hundreds of witches in the Salem region,
and the Court’s perfect record of conviction thus far spurred it on. On Sep-
tember 9 it tried and condemned six more witches, and eight days later nine
more. Of the fifteen, eight were hanged on September 22: Martha Cory, Mary
Esty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Reed, Samuel
Wardwell, and Mary Parker. Of the seven who escaped hanging, five had
confessed and were at least temporarily reprieved: Rebecca Eames, Abigail
Hobbs, Mary Lacey, Sr., Ann Foster, and Dorcas Hoar. The execution of
Abigail Faulkner, daughter of Francis Dane, was postponed because of her
pregnancy, while Mary Bradbury of Salisbury escaped. Ninety-three neighbors
had signed a statement on Bradbury’s behalf, indicating how beloved she was
of her neighbors in Salisbury, and when she escaped it is quite likely, given her
infirmity, that she had help. Once she disappeared, authorities made little
attempt to find her.27
Of those cases included in the previous list, we might pause to bring two of
those introduced earlier to completion – those of Martha Cory and Mary Esty.
In the most significant deposition entered for her trial, Edward Putnam and
Ezekiel Cheever reviewed the previous detailed charges brought against Cory
by Ann Putnam Sr., as well as what had transpired upon their visit to Martha
Cory’s house on March 12.28 But further testimony was added to the evidence.
Elizabeth Booth testified that the apparition of George Needham had
appeared to her and had said that Martha Cory had killed him because he
would not mend her spinning wheel. Elizabeth Hubbard reported that not
only had Cory afflicted her, but that she had seen Cory torment Mercy
Lewis, Abigail Williams, and Ann Putnam Jr. Lewis confirmed that Cory
had tortured her and added, “I believe in my heart that Martha Cory is a
most dreadful witch, and that she hath often afflicted me [and] several
others by her acts of witchcraft.”29 The Court agreed. On September 11, the
day after Martha Cory was condemned, the Reverend Samuel Parris wrote:
Sister Martha Cory – taken into the church 27 April 1690 – was, after
examination upon suspicion of witchcraft, 27 March 1692, committed
to prison for the fact, and was condemned to the gallows for the same
yesterday; and was this day in public, by a general consent, voted to be
excommunicated out of the church, and Lieutenant Nathaniel Putnam
and the two deacons chosen to signify to her, with the pastor, the mind
of the church herein.
Parris added that three days later, Putnam and the two deacons visited Cory in
prison. They found her as unrepentant as before, “justifying herself, and con-
demning all that had done anything to her just discovery or condemnation.” He
concluded, “[A]fter prayer – which she was willing to decline – the dreadful
sentence of excommunication was pronounced upon her.”30
About Mary Esty we know only a little more than what has already been
reported. The previously noted outpouring of emotional support concerning
what many believe was Esty’s innocence continued at her trial. Immediately
preceding her appearance before the Court of Oyer and Terminer, a petition
written by Esty and her sister Sarah Cloyce was read to the Court. In it,
they made the following requests. First, “seeing that we are neither able to
plead our own cause, nor is counsel allowed to those in our condition,” they
asked the judges to counsel them “wherever we may stand in need.”31
Second, whereas they were still convinced of their innocence and whereas
people “of good report” had deposed that they had never been guilty of “any
other scandalous evil or miscarriage inconsistent with Christianity,” they
requested that some of those deponents offering evidence favorable to their
case, including the pastor and others of the town and church of Topsfield,
be allowed to testify before the Court of Oyer and Terminer. And finally,
the two asked that the testimony of the confessed witches and of the afflic-
ted not be used to condemn them “without other legal evidence concurring,”
a point consistent with accepted legal procedures but with which the Court
seemed little concerned.32
All of the petitions in her favor notwithstanding, Esty was condemned,
but she made one last appeal. It was not only for herself, but for those yet to
stand trial. Her appeal is worth quoting at length, because it reflects a per-
ceptive and sensitive assessment of the Court’s actions thus far. To the
Governor, members of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, and “the Reverend
Ministers” she wrote that having seen “plainly the wiles and subtlety” of her
accusers, she despaired of any more favorable outcome for the rest of the
accused than had resulted in her case:
I petition to your Honours, not for my own life, for I know I must die,
and my appointed time is set; but … if it be possible, that no more
innocent blood be shed, which undoubtedly cannot be avoided in the
way and courses you go in. I question not but your Honors do to
the utmost of your powers in the discovery and detecting of witchcraft
and witches, and would not be guilty of innocent blood for the world;
but by my own innocence, I know you are in the wrong way. The Lord
in his infinite mercy directs you in this great work; if it be his blessed
will, that no more innocent blood be shed, I humbly beg of you that
Your Honours would be pleased to examine these persons strictly, and
keep them apart some time, and likewise to try some of these confessing
witches, I being confident there are several of them have belied them-
selves and others … They say myself and others have made a league
with the Devil. … I know and the Lord He knows … they belie me, and
so I question not but they do others. The Lord above, who is the
searcher of all hearts knows, as I shall answer it at the Tribunal Seat,
that I know not the least thing of witchcraft; therefore I cannot, I dare
not, belie my own soul.33
On Thursday, September 22, Martha Cory, Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Ann
Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmot Reed, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary
Parker were taken by cart to Gallows Hill and executed. When all had been
hanged, the Reverend Nicholas Noyes was heard to say, “What a sad thing
it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there.” The number of executed
had now reached nineteen, not including one of the most notorious cases of
all – that of Giles Cory.34
The Ordeal of Giles Cory
We started the story of Giles Cory in Chapter 4 with some discussion about
his arrest and appearance before the Salem magistrates. He was jailed and
subsequently indicted by a grand jury in early September. He spent one
month in the Salem jail, but when his specter continued to appear regularly
to Mary Warren, he was ordered removed to Boston.35 On September 19,
following the condemnation of his wife but before her execution, Giles Cory
was crushed beneath a pile of rocks. Why he was so treated merits some
explanation.
On or about September 16, the Court of Oyer and Terminer ordered the
sheriff to pile rocks on Giles Cory because he had chosen not to stand trial.
Because his records have not survived, it is not known exactly what hap-
pened, but nearly all of the historians who have investigated the matter
believe that sometime soon after September 9, when he was called to face
the Court, Cory either entered a plea of not guilty and refused to place
himself on trial, or he remained silent altogether.36
David C. Brown has made a persuasive case for the former. First, Brown
has pointed out, Robert Calef, who has provided the most complete account
of his trial, has specifically stated that Cory pleaded not guilty and refused
to “put himself upon trial by jury.” The other accounts, Brown has rea-
soned, likely merely shortened their reference to the two-step procedure by
simply saying he refused to enter a plea. Second, Brown continued, if Cory
had both refused to enter a plea and stood mute, under the law the Court
would have had to impanel a jury to determine whether he had stood mute
“of malice” or “by the visitation of God,” having been struck dumb. If
decided as being the former, Cory would have been treated as if he had “put
himself on the country.” If as the latter, the Court would have ordered the
trial to proceed as if Cory had pleaded not guilty. In either event, there is no
evidence that any additional hearings took place.37
Under English law, “standing mute” after entering a not guilty plea prevented
a court from ordering a person to stand trial. He could be tried only if he “put
himself on the country” or agreed to a jury trial “by God and my country.” His
not having done that, the Court was forced to proceed against Cory in another
manner. The judges resorted to peine forte et dure, a seldom-used procedure
whereby they hoped to force Cory to agree to stand trial.
What Cory intended by his unusual action is also unclear. Most believe
that by refusing to stand trial, he hoped to protect his property from con-
fiscation. After his arrest, Cory had deeded his land to his two sons-in-law,
William Cleeves and John Moulton. Martha, after all, was to be executed,
and, as he put it, he lay “under great trouble and affliction” and knew not
how he would “depart this life.” By “standing mute,” many historians have
argued, he would at least prevent the Court from finding him guilty and
confiscating his property. David Brown, however, has found that in 1692
forfeiture of one’s estate upon conviction for witchcraft was illegal.38
Witchcraft was a felony under seventeenth-century English law, and in
most cases felonies were punishable by death, corruption of blood, con-
fiscation of one’s belongings, and forfeiture of one’s lands. Corruption of a
felon’s blood meant that he could not own any property or convey property
to his heirs. “Standing mute” and avoiding conviction was one way to avoid
such repercussions. Under English law, however, witchcraft was a special
felony for which provisions for corruption of blood and forfeiture of real
property did not apply. Moreover, as early as 1641 in its Body of Liberties,
the Massachusetts General Court abolished laws of forfeiture for all felo-
nies. Goods or “moveable property” could still be confiscated, if expressly
permitted by law, in this case meaning laws passed in regard to witchcraft,
but no such provision for confiscation has been found.39
On June 15, 1692, the Massachusetts General Court under its new charter
passed an act continuing all laws adopted under its previous charter, which
would have included the laws abolishing forfeiture. No attempt was made
to establish a law of forfeiture or confiscation in cases of witchcraft until
December 14, 1692, about three months after Cory’s death, and it was dis-
allowed by the Privy Council as “repugnant to the laws of England.” David
Brown has argued that the bill of December 1692 may well have been a
failed attempt to sanction those confiscations that had already taken place.40
If Brown is correct, either Giles Cory was aware of the law and stood
mute for another reason, or he was not and he wasted his life. Brown favors
the first interpretation, suggesting that Cory refused to “put himself on the
country” out of contempt for the Court of Oyer and Terminer. But as even
Brown admits, legally or not, confiscations had occurred, as we shall see in
the final chapter, and regardless of the letter of the law, it is entirely plau-
sible that Cory believed his property would be in jeopardy if he were to be
convicted.41
Whatever he might have intended, on September 17, Sheriff George
Corwin ordered “great weights” to be piled on Giles Cory, one at a time,
until he changed his mind. The sheriff placed rocks on his chest in the field
beside the Ipswich jail, to which Cory had been returned to stand trial.
Under English law, his only sustenance during the ordeal would have been
alternating days of bread (“three morsels” was prescribed) and water (“three
draughts”). However, Giles Cory never did change his mind, and as legend
has it his only comment was, “More weight.” On or about September 19
(the date is unclear), Cory’s body yielded to the weight pressed upon him.
As Robert Calef put it, his tongue protruded from his mouth until an official
forced it back with his cane. Exaggerated or not, it was undoubtedly not a
pretty scene. And upon his death, the sheriff threatened to confiscate Cory’s
property until he was paid eleven pounds, six shillings by his sons-in-law.42
David Brown, who has found so much irregularity already in the pro-
ceedings against Giles Cory, has argued that even peine forte et dure was
illegal. In Massachusetts, he has pointed out, there were no laws expressly
providing for it, and to his way of thinking, based on provisions in the laws
of 1641, confirmed in 1692, it would have been precluded as cruel and unu-
sual punishment. There was only one other case in Massachusetts history
where a prisoner was threatened with peine forte et dure, and that occurred
in the winter of 1638–1639, when Dorothy Talbye, a one-time member of
the Salem town church, was indicted for murdering her three-year-old
daughter. She stood mute, but when told what was in store for her, she not
only changed her mind but confessed and was hanged! Thus, Giles Cory
retains the dubious distinction of being the only person ever pressed to death
by law in the history of the United States.43
The ordeal of Giles Cory is well known. Less well known is what hap-
pened while he was being pressed to death. At exactly the same hour, it was
reported, Ann Putnam Jr. was nearly crushed by a group of witches. They
laid on Ann’s chest, much as did the rocks upon Cory’s, and they pledged
that she would die before Cory. Ann was saved, her father reported, only
when an apparition in his winding-sheet appeared to her. He drove the
witches from her, and when Ann expressed some compunction concerning
Cory’s fate, he explained to her why Cory had to be pressed to death.44
Cory, the mysterious savior told her, had once pressed a man to death
with his feet – the very man who now stood before her (perhaps Jacob
Goodale, as noted in Chapter 4). At the time of his diabolical compact, the
specter continued, Cory had reached agreement with the Devil wherein the
Devil had promised that he would not hang. So it came to pass. In the end,
although he would pay the price for his transgression, God had hardened his
heart against the advice of the Court, which would have at the least arran-
ged for an easier death. And, as the visitor concluded, that was as it should
be: “It must be done to him as he has done to me.”45
On September 18, the Reverend Nicholas Noyes made the following entry
in the records of Salem’s First Church:
Giles Cory was excommunicated. The cause of it was that he being

accused and indicted for the sin of witchcraft, he refused to plead, and
so incurred the sentence and penalty of peine forte et dure; being
undoubtedly either guilty of the sin of witchcraft, or of throwing him-
self upon sudden and certain death, if he were otherwise innocent.46
In the end, Cory was “damned if he did and damned if he didn’t,” but he
would nonetheless be memorialized for posterity in the following ballad:
Giles Corey was a wizard strong,

A stubborn wretch was he,
And fit was he to hang on high
Upon the locust tree.
So when before the magistrates
For trial he did come,
He would no true confession make
But was completely dumb.
“Giles Corey,” said the magistrate,
“What have thou here to plead
To these who now accuse thy soul
Of crimes and horrid deed?”
Giles Corey – he said not a word,
No single word spoke he.
“Giles Corey,” said the magistrate,
“We’ll press it out of thee.”
They got them then a heavy beam,
They laid it on his breast.
They loaded it with heavy stones,
And hard upon him pressed.
“More weight,” now said this wretched man,
“More weight,” again he cried.
And he did no confession make
But wickedly he died.
Dame Corey lived but three days more,
But three days more lived she,
For she was hanged at Gallows Hill
Upon the locust tree. 47
The Mood in September 1692

The Court of Oyer and Terminer adjourned on September 22, fully expecting
to reconvene soon to continue through the trials of the dozens of indicted
who remained in jail. The fever had peaked. The months of accusations,
examinations, indictments, trials, convictions, confessions, and executions had
given some pause to reflect on what was happening. Many others, however,
became more zealous in their support of the trials. They revised their earlier
estimations of the extent of the problem that New England faced. They no
longer saw what was happening as a conspiracy against a single congregation
or community. It had become an all-out war between the forces of Christ and
the Devil.
On August 4, in a sermon subsequently included in his Wonders of the
Invisible World, Cotton Mather, who had urged caution in certain proce-
dural matters before the Court, offered an apocalyptic vision of the crisis
facing not only Salem but also New England. Building on the jeremiads that
had been so popular before the Salem witch trials, Mather interpreted the
witchcraft episode of 1692 as another example of a just divine punishment
for a wayward people. “A variety of calamity has long followed this plan-
tation,” he explained, “and we have all the reason imaginable to ascribe it
unto the rebuke of heaven upon us for our manifold apostasies.” Mather’s
interpretation of events led him to conclude that the Second Coming was
near and that the Devil had seized the brief time he had remaining to launch
an attack on New England. Mather’s objective was to reveal the Devil’s plot
against New England and to muster the opposition in preparation for that
fateful day.48
On September 11, the Reverend Samuel Parris placed recent events into
the context of the 1,700-year-old war waged by “the Devil and his instru-
ments” against Christianity. He chose as his text Revelation 17:14: “These
shall make war with the lamb, and the lamb shall overcome them; for he is
Lord of lords, and King of kings; and they that are with him are called and
chosen and faithful.” He titled his sermon: “The Devil and his instruments
will be warring against Christ and his followers. ”49
During Jesus’s own life on earth, Parris explained, the Devil sought his
destruction, from his “manifold temptations of Christ in the wilderness” to his
putting “it into the heart of one of Christ’s disciples to betray him.” Thereafter,
over the centuries, the Devil had employed many agents to subvert the church.
“In our land,” he continued, the Devil has instigated multitudes of witches and
wizards “with utmost violence to attempt the overthrow of religion.”50
Parris put the matter directly before the members of his congregation.
“There are but two parties in the world,” he pointed out, “the Lamb and his
followers, and the dragon and his followers.” There are no “neuters.” “Every-
one is on one side or the other.” Parris professed his confidence in the outcome
of their struggle, as the Lamb’s victory was assured. “Devils and idolaters will
make war with the Lamb and his followers,” he warned, but to join the Devil’s
troop was “to take the weakest side,” and to “fight for him” was to be paid “no
other wages than [that] of being your eternal torturer.”51
Parris’s purpose was to not only speak out about the danger of the Devil’s
threat, but also “to reprove such as seem to be so amazed at the war the
Devil ha[d] raised among [them] by wizards and witches, that they alto-
gether den[ied] it.” “If ever there were witches, men and women in covenant
with the Devil,” he lectured, “here are multitudes in New England.” It was,
Parris added, a problem faced by the chosen people of God on both sides of
the Atlantic, citing Richard Baxter’s The Certainty of the World of Spirits
(London, 1691). Baxter sought to expose “the Devil’s prevalency in this
age,” and after noting that authorities had discovered hundreds of witches in
one English shire, he wrote:
If fame deceives us not, in a village of fourteen houses in the North, are

found so many of this damned brood. Heretofore only barbarous
deserts had them, but now the civilest and religious parts are frequently
pestered with them. Heretofore some silly ignorant old women, etc. but
now we have known those of both sexes, who professed much knowledge,
holiness, and devotion, drawn into this damnable practice.52
At the same time, and for the first time at least publicly, Parris implied that
absolute victory over the Devil and his minions might not be possible in this
world. Thus, he concluded his sermon by shifting his focus from the battle
in the natural world to the final triumph in the hereafter. “After this life the
saints shall no more be troubled with war from devils and their instru-
ments,” he offered. “The city of heaven, provided for the saints, is well-
walled and well-gated and well-guarded, so that no devils nor their
instruments shall enter thereunto.”53 Perhaps the enormity of the forces
arrayed against him was beginning to take its toll, and he was tiring or
even despairing of its outcome. Or maybe Parris was aware of the skepticism
of a growing number of people regarding the Salem witch trials and what that
skepticism portended.
Mather and Parris, and no doubt others who did not articulate their fears,
had come to believe that they were the victims of a cosmic plot involving an
unprecedented, at least in New England, number of witches. The details of
the plot – indeed the sheer enormity of it – were made clear by the equally
unprecedented number of confessions. At least forty-three by one estimate,54
fifty-five by another,55 of the accused “voluntarily” or “freely” revealed the
details of an incredible diabolical conspiracy to destroy New England. The
impact of those confessions should not be underestimated. John Hale cred-
ited them with being the factor “which chiefly carried on this matter [the
trials] to such a height.”56 Before concluding this chapter, then, some further
discussion of the confessions is necessary regarding both their probable
cause and meaning.
The Confessions of 1692

Earlier reference was made to John Procter’s complaint that authorities had
tortured Richard and Andrew Carrier, as well as his own son, William, in
an attempt to get them to confess. Thomas Brattle and Robert Calef offered
similar accounts. Brattle claimed that the accused faced “violent, distracting,
and dragooning methods” and repeated “unreasonable urgings.”57 Calef,
who claimed that Samuel Parris beat Tituba to force her to confess, wrote
that there were many tedious interrogations with questioners taking turns to
persuade them until “the accused were wearied out by being forced to stand
so long, or for want of sleep, etc. and so brought to give an assent to what
they said.”58 In some such cases, the records indicate, not only did the con-
fession result in relief for the afflicted, but also in their embracing the
accused in tearful forgiveness of their tormenters.59
As we have seen, there were even more subtle, yet equally effective,
methods employed. We have already referred to the six women from And-
over who confessed that because “some gentlemen” so often and forcefully
told them they were witches, they came to believe it. There was the case of
Sarah Churchill, who was persuaded to confess, first by the threat that she
would otherwise be thrown into the dungeon with George Burroughs,
whom she had helped condemn, and second by realizing that she could deny
having signed the book a hundred times and no one would believe her, but if
she admitted it only once she would be left alone. And there were those who
confessed because their families and friends urged them to, especially when
it became clear that the confessed would not be hanged, at least not imme-
diately. One group of six confessed witches made this motive clearer: “Our
nearest and dearest relations … apprehending that there was no other way to
save our lives … but by our confessing … they out of tender love and pity
persuaded us to confess what we did confess.” Of the forty-three, or fifty-five,
people who confessed, none was executed. All of those who insisted they were
innocent and were found guilty were sentenced to death.60
Such measures may not have constituted torture, as it was known on the
continent of Europe, but they were sufficiently harsh to prevent historians from
accepting the Court’s position that the confessions were freely given. More-
over, they were very effective in soliciting a sufficient number of confessions to
lend substance and credibility to the witch trials for several weeks. But what
exactly did the confessions say? What common elements did they contain
that might tell us something about the Salem witch trials and the culture
that produced them?
Emerson Baker and Elizabeth Reiss have suggested that several of con-
fessions might be attributed to some women’s sense of self-worth and their
place in Puritan society. As Baker has written: “As the ‘weaker vessel,’
women were all too regularly reminded, sometimes forcefully, that they
were susceptible to sin and the temptations of the Devil, so they tended to
believe they were sinful by the very nature.” Baker and Reis found evidence
of this in several public confessions and testimonies, including that of
Rebecca Nurse. Elsewhere, Larry Gragg has found that the confessions of
1692 suggest that “a cunning black man” approached people at vulnerable
times in their lives. A number were experiencing financial difficulties. Wil-
liam Barker, for example, was finding it difficult to provide for his family. A
few had frustrated love lives: Mercy Wardwell was convinced that no young
man would ever love her. Some were experiencing guilt over their actions, like
Rebecca Eames, who was despondent over an adulterous relationship and an
attempted suicide. Others had lost their faith, like Hannah Bromage, who “had
been under some deadness with respect to the ordinances for the matter of six
weeks.” And still others had developed uncontrollable fears of the various
worldly threats to life and limb with which they were surrounded. Mary
Toothaker, for example, was terrified by rumors of renewed Indian attacks.61
To such troubled individuals, the Devil offered resolution, but to even
more he promised other rewards: fine clothes, a comfortable life, “happiness
and joy,” “a pair of French fall shoes,” and even “crowns in Hell.” Whatever
the ploy, the confessors reported that the Devil had been persuasive, recruiting
some of the accused as much as twenty years earlier. Moreover, he had even
been able to attract the young, like twelve-year-old Mary Bridges, to cite just
one example not mentioned earlier.62
As Emerson Baker has concluded, the confessions “turned traditional
Puritan faith upside down,” an inversion of Christianity common to Eur-
opean witchcraft. Similar to what was reported in Europe in the seventeenth
century, joining the Devil, the New England confessors of 1692 revealed,
involved two important rituals: signing the Devil’s book, or at least making
one’s mark, and being baptized by him. Some signed with pen and ink.
Others made their mark with pricked and bleeding fingers and in a number
of other ways. Once they had signed, however, the Devil took them to a
pond or a river and baptized them, either by partial or total immersion,
whereupon the baptized renounced Christ and yielded to Satan their “soul
and body.”63
Once baptized, the Devil’s recruits were obligated to attend witches’
meetings, that had occurred, confessors testified, in places such as Samuel
Parris’s field or in Andover at either Chandler’s garrison or Joseph Ballard’s
home. The meetings could be observed only by those who had covenanted
with the Devil, because, as Mary Lacey Jr. explained, the Devil “puts a mist
before” the eyes of ordinary people and “will not let them see.” Witches
traveled to their meetings, or went about their diabolical business, on foot
or by horseback or wagon, or they flew on sticks or poles.64
Confessors’ estimates as to the numbers of those attending witches’ Sabbaths
in the area ranged from a handful to as many as 500. George Burroughs often
presided, as did the Devil himself, and the ceremony included a sermon and a
mock communion. During the sermon, the presider called upon those gathered
to advance the Devil’s triumph over Christianity by afflicting others, thereby
weakening their allegiance to Christ’s kingdom. He prophesied that the Devil
would triumph over Christianity. The communion involved white or brown
bread and blood-red sacramental wine, often drawn from pots or barrels in
earthen cups.65
Notably missing from the confessions of 1692, Richard Godbeer has
pointed out, are references to sex, certainly as compared to the sexual pre-
occupation of continental Europeans during the Great European Witch-
Hunt. It may be recalled from Chapter 1 that according to the European
model, once the formal business of the witches’ Sabbath was concluded,
participants “broke into lascivious dancing and soon fell upon each other in
a frenzy of sexual abandon.” Witches engaged in various sexual acts, and
the Devil worked his way through the company copulating with all present,
men and women alike.66
Whereas sex with the Devil was a central characteristic of witchcraft lore
on the continent, it was not in England – save for some of the confessions
that resulted from the prosecutions of Matthew Hopkins during the 1640s –
or in New England. Prior to 1692 in New England, Godbeer has found, only
two women who confessed to witchcraft claimed that they had engaged in
sexual acts with the Devil. During the Salem witch trials, such confessions
were entirely absent. Only two of the depositions given by hostile witnesses
even hinted at sexual relations between witches and the Devil. Edward
Bishop claimed that the Devil had “come unto” his wife Sarah Bridget, that
she was “familiar with the Devil,” and that “she sat up all the night long
with the Devil.” Similarly accused witch Rebecca Eames testified that
although she did not know Sarah Parker (one of the accused) to be a witch,
she had heard that Parker had been “crossed in love” and that “the Devil
had come to her and kissed her.”67
Carol Karlsen has found evidence to suggest that there existed a connec-
tion in some seventeenth-century New England cases between accusations of
witchcraft and prior illicit sexual behavior. She has estimated that twenty-
three women accused of witchcraft had also been “explicitly charged with
sexual excesses, either during their witch trials or during the years preceding
the accusations.”68 In two of the Salem cases, a connection was made
between illicit sexual behavior and witchcraft. Evidence given against
Bridget Bishop and Susannah Martin suggests that male neighbors and
acquaintances found them sexually provocative and linked that perception
to suspicions of witchcraft. Male deponents claimed that Bishop and Martin
had visited them at night and subjected them to various physical actions that
could be seen as being of a sexual nature. Bishop’s activities along this line
have already been mentioned. Martin visited Bernard Peach’s bedroom one
night and “lay upon him about an hour and a half.”69 Such explicit refer-
ences, however, were few, exceptional, and comparatively tame.
The emphasis on sex in European accounts, Godbeer has argued, was
intended to reinforce an official campaign against sexual license. Its absence
from descriptions in New England could have been the result of a lesser
concern for such behavior, but Godbeer has suggested that it might also
have been intended to emphasize the similarity between witches’ and Chris-
tian Sabbath activities, thereby posing a very different sort of challenge to
official values. Witch behavior in Europe was portrayed as the inversion of
order, sanctity, and virtue. As such, it was used by authorities in a campaign
to acculturate and subordinate the peasantry. By portraying an ideological
polarity between Christian order and diabolical disorder, authorities could
better teach peasants that all forms of behavior fell into one of those two
categories, and that the first was possible only by rejecting the second.70
In New England, rather than inverting orthodox behavior, Godbeer has
pointed out, accounts drawn from confessions portray witch behavior that
actually mimicked that of the Puritan community. Instead of using its
opposite to validate acceptable behavior, the stereotype that emerged
“equated the godly and diabolical communities,” or, as the Reverend Deodat
Lawson put it, made the Devil’s “Kingdom and Administrations to resemble
those of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This congruity, Godbeer has argued,
“constituted a thinly veiled attack on Puritan orthodoxy itself.” Satanism
and Puritanism were interchangeable. The black figure was analogous to the
Puritan minister; the Devil’s book to the Bible; his rituals of worship,
including the consumption of bread and wine, to those of good Christians;
and the signing of the diabolical pact and related rituals to Christian
baptism.71
Once again, in contrast to what occurred in Europe, Godbeer has con-
cluded that the creation of this stereotype was attributable to the confessors
only, not to the ministry. The ministers, after all, could only stand to lose
by it. Confessors stood to gain in that while taking advantage of a way to
escape execution, suspects could attack their prosecutors by suggesting that
the society they were accused of having joined and the society that sought to
reclaim or destroy them were essentially one and the same. “By equating the
godly and the diabolical, confessors transformed an act of surrender into
one of resistance and defiance,” and in the process shocked and insulted
authority.72
Finally, perhaps most terrifying to those who listened and believed, was
the confessors’ common insistence that the Devil had employed them in
order “to pull down the Kingdom of Christ.” According to William Barker,
the reader will recall, the Devil had selected Salem village to begin his cam-
paign because the people had been divided and differed with their ministers.
After destroying the village church, Barker commented, the Devil would
move to Salem town “and so go through the country.” The Devil would
“make as many witches” as he could and eventually establish his kingdom.
In that kingdom, confessors explained, the Devil promised “happy days.” In
a direct challenge to all for which Puritan New England stood, and that no
doubt appealed to many who had become disillusioned with the rigorous
Puritan ideals of the Bible Commonwealth, “all persons should be equal;
there should be no day of resurrection or of judgment, and neither punish-
ment nor shame for sin.”73
Cotton Mather, like many of his clerical contemporaries and predecessors
in Old and New England, was willing to dismiss some of the confessions as
being little more than the “delusions of Satan.” But he argued that most
should be believed. They had been made by “intelligent persons of all ages,
in sundry towns, at several times,” and often they were “harmonious.”74 As
Thomas Brattle wrote to a friend on October 8, 1692:
The great cry of our neighbors now is what, will you not believe the
confessors? Will you not believe men and women who confess that they
have signed to the Devil’s book? That they were baptized by the Devil;
and that they were at the mock-sacrament once and again? What, will
you not believe that this is witchcraft, and that such and such men are
witches?75
Many did believe the confessors, including the judges of the Court of Oyer
and Terminer. But, by October, some had begun to have their doubts.
Notes
bridge University Press, 2014), 249; Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston,
MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 296–297.
2 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 497, 530–532, 245–246.
Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 194. The full title of
Ady’s book is A Candle in the Dark, or a Treatise Concerning the Nature of
Witches and Witchcraft. The author described his work as “advice to judges,
sheriffs, justices of the peace, and grandjury men on what to do before they pass
sentence on such as are arraigned for their lives as witches.”
6 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 194; Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 34.
10 Upham lists thirty-two residents as signatories of the first petition: Upham,
Salem Witchcraft, II: 305–306; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 534–535.
12 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 193
15 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 194–195; Records of the Salem Witch-
Hunt, 509–510; Cotton Mather, “Wonders of the Invisible World,” in George
Lincoln Burr, ed. Narratives of the New England Witchcraft Cases (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 241–244; Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch
Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege (New York:
Cooper Square Press, 2022), 220–221.
19 Thomas Brattle, Letter of Thomas Brattle (1692), in Burr, ed., Narratives of the
Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706, 177.
20 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 300–301; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the
Invisible World (1700), in Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–
1706, 360–361.
21 Calef, More Wonders, 360–361; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 198.
22 Quoted in Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 145.
25 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 301.
setts, 199–200.
36 David C. Brown, “The Case of Giles Corey,” Essex Institute Historical Collec-
tions, 121 (October 1985), 282; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 338.
37 Brown, “Giles Corey,” 285–286, 288.
38 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 337; Brown, “Giles Corey,” 283.
39 Brown, “Giles Corey,” 289–290, 293–294.
40 Brown, “Giles Corey,” 294–295, 297.
41 Brown, “Giles Corey,” 293, 295, 293.
42 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 205; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 151–
152; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 671, 865.
43 Brown, “Giles Corey,” 298–299.
46 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, I: 344.
47 Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
(New York: Doubleday, 1995), 185–186.
48 Quoted in Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 147.
51 Quoted in Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, The Social
Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 178.
52 Quoted in Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 146–147.
54 Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 55.
56 John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), in Burr, ed.,
Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706, 416.
57 Brattle, Letter, 189.
58 The only person executed after confessing was Samuel Wardwell, but he recanted
his confession at his trial. Calef, More Wonders, 376; Emerson W. Baker, A
Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 154–155.
1692 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), I: 23.
60 Calef, More Wonders, 375; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 154.
61 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 157–158; Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners
and Witches in Puritan New England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1997), 121–163; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 147–148.
63 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 160; see also: Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 149.
68 Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial
New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 138.
71 Quoted in Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 62, 65.
72 Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 67–68.
75 Brattle, Letter, 174.
9 “It Were Better That Ten Suspected
Witches Should Escape, Than That
One Innocent Person Should Be
Condemned”
Perhaps it is appropriate that we begin our discussion about the end of the
Salem witch trials with the spectral appearance of Mary Esty. On September
22, 1692, the same day she was hanged and the Court of Oyer and Terminer
adjourned, the ghost of Mary Esty appeared in Wenham, Massachusetts, to
a seventeen-year-old girl, Mary Herrick. “I am going upon the ladder to be
hanged for a witch,” Esty said, “but I am innocent and before a twelfth-month
be past you shall believe it.” Then Esty vanished.1
Wenham, although close to Salem, had escaped the ravages of the witch-
craft hysteria. Nevertheless, Mary Herrick no doubt was informed about
what was happening, and she quite likely had heard of Mary Esty. Whether
or not she sympathized with Esty we cannot tell, but Herrick said nothing at
first regarding her visit. Soon after, however, she began to experience pains.
No physical cause could be found, but when the specter of the wife of the
Reverend John Hale appeared to her, Herrick assumed Mrs. Hale was her
tormentor. Hale appeared regularly, and Herrick concluded that it was her
hand that pinched and choked her.2
At length, Mrs. Hale spoke, “Do you think I am a witch?” “No! You be
the Devil!” Herrick replied. Esty, who then reappeared, had successfully
carried out her ploy. She explained to Herrick that “she had been put to
death wrongfully,” that she was innocent, and that she had come “to vindi-
cate her cause.” She cried, “Vengeance! Vengeance!” and ordered Herrick to
tell the Reverend Hale and her own pastor, Joseph Gerrish, what she had
witnessed, whereupon she, Esty, would rise no more and the specter of the
innocent Mrs. Hale would no longer afflict her.3
Mary Herrick understood the lesson she had been taught, and she fol-
lowed Esty’s orders. She told Gerrish about the “delusion of the Devil” she
had witnessed, and the two met with, and informed, the Reverend Hale.
Hale was no doubt stunned by Herrick’s report. He knew his wife was
innocent, and if her specter could appear, if she could be cried out against
and evidence offered against her that the Court could use to condemn her,
might not others have been wrongfully condemned? Although he may have
had doubts prior to this point, Hale resolved that the continued use of
spectral evidence was wrong. Clearly, as some had warned all along, God
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-10
204 “It Were Better That Ten Suspected Witches Should Escape …”
could permit, and no doubt had permitted, the Devil to use the shape of the
innocent to delude those obsessed with his presence among them.4
Voices Are Raised in Opposition to the Trials

The ghost of Mary Esty, of course, was not the only, or even the most
consequential, factor contributing to doubts concerning the witch trials. For
various other reasons – including the integrity of the accused and their
admirable behavior even though condemned to an almost certain death – a
growing number of people began to have second thoughts. As summer
ended, one of the leading causes of discontent was the sudden rush of
recantations.
Several of the recantations have already been noted. Tituba admitted she
had lied, blaming it on Parris’s mistreatment of her, but in notable contrast
to her confession little was made of it.5 Thomas Brattle reported that in late
summer several confessors “recanted their confessions, acknowledging, with
sorrow and grief, that it was an hour of great temptation with them.”6
When Increase Mather visited the Salem jail on October 19, he found that
most of the several confessors there (he noted eight by name) were eager to
renounce their earlier testimonies. He reported that those who had confessed
were filled with horror and anguish at what they had done, both to themselves
and to others they had implicated, and that they were willing to renounce those
confessions even though it might well lead to their execution.7
Public petitions to the Court and open criticism of its procedures became
more frequent. By early October, almost 300 people had offered support,
largely through petitions, for one or more of the accused, and critics such as
Robert Calef, Thomas Maule, and Thomas Brattle began to make their
sentiments known. Common threads to the several challenges to the court’s
actions were the continued belief in the existence of Satan and his capacity
to harm people, that the evidence used in court to condemn the accused was
not reliable, and that the charges brought were prompted by more earthly
matters. Calef’s criticism has already been noted. Maule, a Salem Quaker,
stated that he believed the entire affair had been concocted from the petty
quarrels of the community, and that it all could be brought to an end if
people would simply obey the injunction, “love your enemies.” Maule fur-
ther asked his fellow Salem residents who could count themselves among the
wholly guiltless in matters of witchcraft. It was, he offered, like the biblical
story of Jesus’s response to those who would stone the woman taken in
adultery (John 8:7). He wrote, “He that is wholly clear of every degree of
witchcraft may cast a stone at witches.”8
Thomas Brattle, a successful, wealthy, and well-regarded Boston mer-
chant, who was also a mathematician, an astronomer, and a member of the
Royal Society, stated his ideas in a public letter, dated October 8, 1692, to
an unnamed correspondent of the clerical profession. Brattle characterized
Oyer and Terminer Chief Justice William Stoughton as “very zealous” in the
“It Were Better That Ten Suspected Witches Should Escape …” 205
proceedings and “very impatient” of criticism. He had great respect for
Stoughton in most matters, Brattle allowed, but in this matter “wisdom and
counsel are withheld from his honor.” Brattle claimed that the judge’s class
bias prevented him from dispensing justice to all of the suspects and that the
rich often escaped punishment. In particular, he cited Margaret Thatcher,
Judge Jonathan Corwin’s sixty-seven-year-old mother-in-law, who had been
named by several of the afflicted but had never been formally charged, as
well as escapees Elizabeth Cary, Philip and Mary English, and John Alden,
who had never even been pursued.9
Brattle denounced the use of spectral evidence, but he went even further,
abandoning the tact others had employed. He described the testimony that
the afflicted and confessed offered of witches’ Sabbaths, the Devil’s bap-
tisms, and mock sacraments as “nothing else but the effect of their fancy,
depraved and deluded by the Devil.” He accused the judges of having
allowed testimony from the Devil himself, through witnesses who swore to
what they said the Devil communicated to them. And he condemned the
judges for excusing the accusing girls and confessing witches when they
contradicted each other by saying that the Devil in such circumstances had
momentarily taken away their memory, obscured their brains, and misled
them.10
It was a disgrace, Brattle continued, that the magistrates had based their
judgments on such evidence as common gossip, irresponsible confessions,
and the pretensions of the afflicted girls. He charged the girls with lying,
but he also denounced those “Salem gentlemen” who had encouraged them
in the prosecutions, as well as those of Boston who had supported them.
To make his point, Brattle made it clear that he believed the charges
brought by the accusing girls had been fraudulent, but he also pointed out
that in some cases they could not have been the ones generating the accu-
sations. “[S]everal persons,” he wrote, “have been apprehended purely
upon the complaint of these afflicted, [and] to whom the afflicted were
perfect strangers.”11
Brattle, as well as any, saw the predicament in which the Court found
itself, and he did not minimize it. “I am sensible that it is irksome and dis-
agreeable to go back when a man’s doing so is an implication that he has been
walking in the wrong path.” “However,” he concluded, “nothing is more hon-
orable than, upon due conviction, to retract and undo (so far as may be) what
has been amiss and irregular.”12
Unlike others who had thus far either written anonymously, or used only
their initials, Brattle signed his full name to his letter. Open defiance without
fear of reprisal was now possible. Moreover, he ended his open letter by
reporting that he knew several people “about the Bay” of intelligence, judgment,
and piety, who had also come to condemn the proceedings.13
Contrary to what is commonly believed, some of the most effective
opposition to the Salem witch trials came from Massachusetts ministers. To
be sure, the Reverend Samuel Parris played a key role in the outbreak of the
witchcraft hysteria, as did the Reverends Nicholas Noyes and Deodat
Lawson. They may have been true believers, or perhaps, as has been
charged, they merely sought to re-establish their lost authority, but there
were few others who openly supported the trials. Many stepped forward to
defend the accused. There were, for example, the Reverend Francis Dane,
who managed to turn the tide of opinion in Andover; ministers Edward
Payson and Samuel Phillips of Rowley, who defended Elizabeth How; and
the Reverend John Wise of Ipswich, who spoke out on John Procter’s
behalf. Unsung and largely forgotten ministers in Marblehead, Topsfield,
Salisbury, and elsewhere did much the same, the case of the Salisbury minister
being representative.14
On August 9, 1692, “R.P.” – Salisbury minister Robert Pike – drafted a
letter to Judge Jonathan Corwin. At first, Pike had only followed events in
Salem from a distance. When Nathaniel Saltonstall resigned from the Court
of Oyer and Terminer and Corwin took his place, however, Pike visited
Salem to make some first-hand observations. Later he became involved in
the cases of Mary Bradbury of Salisbury and Susannah Martin, the latter
who was known there. Pike had taken the formal depositions of the resi-
dents of the town in those cases, but he was skeptical of what he had heard,
especially the use of spectral evidence. He was one of a growing number of
people who believed that Satan could assume the shape of innocent people,
and that that the court should “let a guilty person live till further dis-
covery, than to put an innocent person to death.” Thus, he joined dozens
of Bradbury’s neighbors in petitioning the Court of Oyer and Terminer on
her behalf.15
The Burroughs trial had just ended, and Pike wrote that he had come to
believe that the trials had left the lives of innocent people “to the pleasure
and passion of those that are minded to take them away.” The witnesses
were not only informers, he continued, “but sole judges of the crime.” Pike
emphasized the “doubtfulness and unsafety” of admitting spectral evidence
“against the life of any that are of blameless conversation, and plead
innocent,” and he asked just how witchcraft was to be proved under such
circumstances. Were reports of witches’ Sabbaths in Parris’s pasture to be
trusted? Was it appropriate that the testimony of what appeared to him to
be erratic witnesses carry such weight in condemning others who had
seemed quite innocent? Had not the Devil once carried Christ himself from
place to place to tempt him and yet left him innocent? Might witch marks
simply be a product of nature? And had not confessions often been
“necessitated”?16
Implying that the girls might be possessed, not afflicted, Pike asked who it
was, if not the Devil, that had pointed out to the Salem girls things that they
could not see, especially when some things that they had reported were false
and mistaken. “Is the Devil a competent witness in such a case?” he asked.
And how reliable was the touch test on which the judges had placed such
emphasis? Was it likely that the accused, appearing in a court of law where
they had been charged with witchcraft, would in full view of all practice
their arts openly? Such actions would only contribute to their condemna-
tion, he reasoned, leading him to conclude that if that were the case the
Devil had “become a reformer to purge … witches out of the world”!17
Although written in the form of a personal letter, Pike’s having addressed
such leading questions to a member of the Court of Oyer and Terminer was
a daring move. But even more prominent ministers stepped forward to
oppose the trials, including some who had previously supported the witch-
hunt. Samuel Willard was typical of this group. In March, Willard publicly
endorsed Deodat Lawson’s Salem sermon that drove the prosecutions for-
ward, but by late summer he began to express his doubts to the three judges
of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, who were also members of his con-
gregation. In October, he published, although anonymously and in Phila-
delphia, a work titled Some Miscellany Observations on Our Present
Debates Respecting Witchcraft in a Dialogue Between S and B (Salem and
Boston, or possibly Chief Justice William Stoughton and Thomas Brattle).
In his Dialogue, B, Willard’s mouthpiece, called the accusers in the Salem
witch trials “scandalous persons, liars, and loose in their conversation,” as
well as disqualified as reliable witnesses by the fact of their affliction. By Will-
ard’s observation, the girls, with their extraordinary sight, predictions, and dis-
covery of secrets, rather than supporting the proposition that they were afflicted,
had only shown themselves to be either witches or possessed. Such powers,
he insisted, were necessarily the result of one or the other, and, he wrote, “I
charitably believe the latter of them [that they were possessed].”18
That when the girls had been brought before the accused they were struck
down by a mere glance and raised up by a touch of the hand Willard called
an illusion, and use of it as evidence “utterly unlawful” and “exceedingly
fallacious” – to say nothing, he reminded his readers, of being “borrowed
from Popish exorcists.” Willard also renounced the use of spectral evidence.
“If the fact may be done and yet the persons doing it be innocent of the
crime,” he reasoned, “the verdict is merely conjectural, and the man dies by
will and doom; whereas God hath not granted to man such a power over
others’ lives.”19
The reaction to Willard’s critique was predictable, even by Willard. “You
are an admirable advocate of witches,” S responded to B, as had been the
response to others who had raised questions concerning the trials. And,
indeed, Willard would be cried out against soon thereafter, but he was never
formally charged and his opposition to the trials only grew, as did the criticism
of others.20
On October 12, nine Andover residents petitioned the General Court to
have their wives and children released on bond “to remain as prisoners in
their own houses,” where they might be “more tenderly cared for.” The
petitioners spoke of the “distressed condition in prison” of the condemned,
their grief, and the prospect of the descending winter cold dispatching “such
out of the way that have not been used to such hardships.”21 On October
18, twenty-four Andover residents led by ministers Francis Dane and
Thomas Bernard, addressed a similar memorial to Governor Phips and the
General Court. In that petition, the Andover residents acknowledged that
they considered what had happened “the heavy judgment” of a “righteous
God” upon them from which they wished to be purged. They explained that
they did not want to be seen as defending those who “should be found guilty
of so horrid a crime” as witchcraft, but that they believed it was possible
that some among the accused had been misrepresented, and they wished to
speak on their behalf, “having no other design therein, than that the truth
may appear.”22
The petitioners reported that most of the accused had never given them the
least occasion to be suspected of witchcraft. Several of the women were mem-
bers of the church in full communion and were well regarded for “their walk-
ing as becometh women professing godliness.” It was true, they allowed, that
many of the accused had confessed, and if such confessions had been freely
given, the petitioners continued, they had nothing to plead. But, they added, the
petitioners had reason to believe otherwise – namely that “the extreme
urgency” that had been used with some of them by their friends and others who
had privately examined them, and the fear they were then under, may have
induced them to confess, only to later repent their actions.23
Finally, the petitioners called the accusing girls “distempered persons” and
protested the position of authority they had assumed in court. If that were
not changed, they reasoned, the colony’s troubles were likely not only to
continue but even to grow worse. “We know not who can think himself
safe,” they warned, “if the accusations of children and others who are under
a diabolical influence shall be received against persons of good fame.”24
Phips Dismisses the Court of Oyer and Terminer

The Court of Oyer and Terminer adjourned on September 17 and was not
scheduled to resume until November. In October 1692, however, in the
midst of the growing opposition to the Court of Oyer and Terminer, Gov-
ernor William Phips returned once again to Boston. What he no doubt
hoped would be settled in his absence had only grown worse. His own wife,
Lady Mary Phips, had been accused, but not formally charged, when, while
her husband was in Maine, she responded to a plea to the governor for
clemency by ordering the release of a woman accused of witchcraft. Thomas
Brattle may have described Phips’s predicament best. On October 8, he wrote,
several men of “understanding, judgment, and piety, inferior to few” had
publicly condemned the proceedings as likely to “utterly ruin and undo poor
New England.” Included on Brattle’s list were former Governor Simon Brad-
street, former Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, Increase Mather, Samuel
Willard, and Nathaniel Saltonstall. Except for the Reverends Hale, Noyes,
and Parris, Brattle continued, “almost [everyone] throughout the whole
country…[was] very much dissatisfied.”25
Brattle may have overstated the case, but it is clear that Phips had little
choice but to act. On October 12, he reported on what had happened thus
far to William Blathwayt, clerk of England’s Privy Council, charged with
advising the Crown on matters related to the colonies. Phips made it clear
from the start that once having established the Court of Oyer and Terminer,
and while the trials were proceeding, he had been occupied in the service of
the Crown “in the eastern part of the country.” He noted that upon his
arrival in May, he had encountered “a province miserably harassed with a
most horrible witchcraft or possession of devils,” but that he had left Boston
with confidence in the judgment of the Court to resolve matters. When he
returned, however, he had found “many persons in a strange ferment of
dissatisfaction which was increased by some hot springs that blew up the
flame.”26
Phips reported that the Court of Oyer and Terminer had convicted more
than twenty people of practicing witchcraft, and that some of the convicted
had confessed their guilt. He explained that he had been told (quite likely by
Cotton Mather, from whom he had commissioned a report on the affair),
that the Court had begun its proceedings with the accusations of the afflicted
girls but added to it “other humane evidences” to strengthen each case. As
that was the source of some contention, however, Phips had inquired into
the matter and found that “the Devil had taken upon him the name and
shape of several persons who were doubtless innocent” and to his knowl-
edge of good reputation.27
As a result, Phips had forbidden any further incarceration of those who
might yet be accused “without unavoidable necessity” and any further action
taken against those already committed “wherein there may be the least sus-
picion of any wrong to be done unto the innocent.” Phips also banned any
further printing of statements for or against the trials that might kindle “an
inextinguishable flame.” Phips ended his letter by lamenting that there were
those who were seeking to place all of the blame on him for what had
happened, but that he was not willing to go any further than he had until he
heard from their majesties.28
Nevertheless, Phips and the colonial legislature did act prior to their
having received instructions from England. On October 26, the Massachu-
setts General Court called for a fast and for a “convocation of ministers”
that they might “be led in the right way as to the witchcraft.”29 Those
ministers, including the most prominent clerics in Massachusetts, gathered
in Cambridge. Cotton Mather was present, as was Samuel Willard, but all
deferred to Increase Mather to prepare their response, which was subsequently
published under the title Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits
Personating Men (1693).
Increase Mather, who like Willard had endorsed Lawson’s Salem sermon,
and who would express his approbation of his son’s defense of the Salem
witch trials in The Wonders of the Invisible World, did not qualify his belief
in witchcraft. He acknowledged that there were bewitched, as well as
possessed, individuals. In reference to the girls of Salem, he did not specifi-
cally rule out the latter, but he implied the former, explaining that there was
a seemingly unending diversity of ways by which God permitted the Devil to
afflict his people. Drawing upon a number of important texts, including his
own An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684), he con-
firmed the power of the Devil and his minions, among other things, to “steal
money out of men’s pockets and purses, or wine and cider out of their cel-
lars,” to throw “fire on the tops of houses, and to cause a whole town to be
burnt to ashes.” God had allowed the Devil “to violently carry away persons
through the air, several miles from their habitations,” he wrote, as well as to
cause the dead to appear before the living. In sum, Mather insisted, the
Devil was an ever-present reality in their lives. But, he continued, the Devil
was also a master of deception, and all might not be as it appeared, espe-
cially regarding those believed to be associated with him:
The father of lies is never to be believed. He will utter twenty great

truths to make way for one lie. He will accuse twenty witches, if he can
but thereby bring one innocent person into trouble.30
As he and his ministerial colleagues, including his son Cotton, had done in the
past, Increase Mather warned against relying on spectral evidence. Although
“such things are rare and extraordinary, especially when such matters come
before civil judicature,” he wrote, the Devil can “represent an innocent
person.” He offered examples from scripture of the Devil taking an innocent’s
shape, and he argued that the Devil could employ the afflicted as instruments to
destroy the innocent and even the saints of God. Since the Devil “has perfect
skills in optics,” he explained, he could cause the afflicted to see whatever he
wished, making things “appear far otherwise than they are.” The afflicted could
see things “through diabolical mediums,” and therefore the Devil could impose
on their imaginations. He could cause them to believe that an innocent person
was afflicting them when the Devil himself was responsible.31
Mather allowed that spectral evidence could be admitted in a limited way
as evidence in a court of law – that it could be used, for example, to raise
suspicion – but that it should not be used as the basis for conviction. “To
take away the life of anyone, merely because a specter or devil in a bewit-
ched or possessed person does accuse them,” he wrote, “will bring the guilt
of innocent blood on the land.” Further, Mather denounced the use of the
sight and touch tests. He pointed out that there was substantial evidence to
show that people fall into fits for a variety of reasons – “at the sight of
brute-creatures, cats, spiders … [or even] at the sight of cheeses, milk, [or]
apples.” He insisted that no one person had the “natural power” to look
upon others and bewitch them nor to touch them and cure their affliction.
Such powers were supernatural, he insisted. Those who depended on them
for evidence were relying on occult techniques, and, he concluded, “we
ought not to practice witchcrafts to discover witches.”32
Still, Mather did not directly criticize the judges of the Court of Oyer and
Terminer. Neither did he state specifically that it had erred in condemning
those they had already found guilty. By his estimation, the judges were
“wise and good men,” and they had “acted with all fidelity according to
their light” and had “out of tenderness” declined doing some things with
which the ministers would have been dissatisfied. He did not quarrel with
the judges’ assertion that they had not convicted anyone “merely on the
account of what specters ha[d] said, or of what ha[d] been represented to
the eyes or imaginations of sick bewitched persons.” And in the only trial he
actually witnessed, that of George Burroughs, Mather not only concurred
but admitted that he would have found Burroughs guilty as well.33
Nevertheless, Increase Mather, on behalf of the fourteen prominent New
England Puritan divines who signed their names to what he had written,
including Cotton Mather, called into question much of the evidence upon
which the Court of Oyer and Terminer had relied. Coming at a time when
there had already been considerable doubt cast upon its proceedings, that alone
may have been sufficient to cause authorities to move against the Court. But
then, there were Mather’s closing words – those that signaled an important
turning point in the thinking that had guided the Salem witch trials thus far. In
response to those, like Deodat Lawson, who had argued that to ensure that
none of the guilty go free, it might be necessary to condemn some of the
innocent, Mather wrote, “It were better that ten suspected witches should
escape, than that one innocent person should be condemned.”34
If Cases of Conscience was not sufficient to cause authorities to act
against the Court of Oyer and Terminer, it received help from a quite
unexpected quarter. In late October, Governor Phips received opinions
about issues related to the Salem witch trials from four Dutch and French
Calvinist ministers living in New York: Henry Selijns, Peter Peiretus, God-
frey Dellius, and Rudolph Varich. Their views had been solicited and sent to
Phips by Joseph Dudley, former Deputy Governor of Massachusetts, under
Edmund Andros, who, since Andros’s removal and his release from prison
in that bloodless coup, had left Boston for an appointment as New York’s
Chief Justice. Dudley remained a Bostonian at heart, but for a time he was
unpopular. Perhaps he saw this as one way of regaining favor.35
Dudley was clearly well informed on events in Salem, from his corre-
spondence as well as from the firsthand experiences of those who had fled to
New York as fugitives, like the Englishes and the Carys. With that infor-
mation, Dudley posed a series of questions relevant to the trials and sent
them to the above-mentioned ministers, who, although not English, were
highly regarded by Puritan divines. As noted in Chapter 2, there had been
few witch trials in seventeenth-century New Netherlands, because Dutch
theologians and public officials had tempered their fear of witches, or
thereafter in New York, under British rule. A skeptical response to what
was happening in Salem was therefore to be expected, but more importantly
what they had to say served to confirm what had been offered by Increase
Mather and the other Massachusetts ministers, as well as the Court’s several
other critics.36
In brief, Dudley asked if spectral evidence could be trusted. “By no
means,” the ministers responded. God often permitted seemingly inexplic-
able things to happen to good people, and God has often demonstrated that
He would use “any instrument to turn evil into good.” Therefore, no one
should be surprised if God allowed the Devil to abuse the specter of an
innocent person, and to convict on the basis of such evidence would be “the
greatest imprudence.”37
Dudley asked about evidence of previous malice, but once again the min-
isters were skeptical. Honest men could have their fallings-out, they
responded, but the Devil, subtle as he was, would take pains to avoid per-
forming under such obvious circumstances. Although it was possible, it was
not probable that a person whose whole life had been otherwise outwardly
virtuous would be guilty of witchcraft. “An honest and charitable life and
conduct of long continuance, such as meets with universal approbation,”
therefore, would “probably” remove any suspicion of criminal intent on the
part of those who had been accused of witchcraft by the afflicted.38
Regarding the afflicted girls, the New York divines were kind but firm.
Whereas Brattle, for example, had denounced them as liars, the New York
divines allowed that their affliction could be real, and yet not physical. At
the same time, if they were deluded by the Devil, they were in the worst
possible position to identify the source of their affliction. And on it went,
until the New York ministers had called into question all of the principal
procedural points and elements upon which the Court of Oyer and Termi-
ner had relied in its trials and for its convictions.39
In response to the General Court’s calling for a fast and for a convocation of
ministers to consider “the right way” to be taken by the people of Massachusetts
in the witch trials, Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary, “The season and manner of
doing it is such that the Court of Oyer and Terminer count themselves dis-
missed.”40 And sure enough, three days later, on October 29, in receipt of all of
the foregoing critical commentary, Governor Phips dismissed the court.
The Jails Are Emptied

In some respects, the repercussions of Phips’s actions were immediate. Through
the end of October, charges continued to be brought against suspected witches,
but the rate of accusations slowed to a trickle. To cite just one example, in
October, the residents of Gloucester, Massachusetts, having reason to believe
that things diabolical were afoot in their community, summoned the Salem
girls to investigate. The girls found four witches in their midst. In November,
the girls returned to complete the job but were simply ignored. Try as they
may, the girls’ fits failed to result in any arrests.41
In other ways, however, Phips’s actions were less immediately effective.
Dismissing the Court of Oyer and Terminer may have brought about a
temporary halt to the trials, and his other edicts may have slowed the course
of the arrests, but at least fifty – and quite likely more – remained in jail
awaiting trial or execution. Perhaps the single largest group among those
still in jail consisted of those whose fate remained particularly unclear –
those who had confessed. The Old Testament and European tradition made
it clear: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18). In November
1692, however, in the cases of the confessed, the directive had not yet been
implemented.
The principal reason for the stays of execution was to provide for the
continued testimony of the confessed against their more recalcitrant fellow
travelers. At some point, however, their testimony would no longer be
needed, and then what? Paul Boyer, Stephen Nissenbaum, and Carol Karlsen
have concluded that the judges planned to execute the confessors once their
testimony was no longer needed. The English divine, William Perkins,
whom New England Puritans found instructive on several related matters,
had written that those who confessed to witchcraft should be given time to
examine their souls, but then justice was to be done.42 Larry Gragg, how-
ever, has suggested that the Court may have been preparing to spare the
lives of those who had confessed and repented. As evidence, he has cited the
case of Mary Lacey Jr., wherein the judges told her that if she would freely
confess and repent, she would “obtain mercy … [and] be saved by Christ,”
as well as the judges’ instructions to John Willard, “If you can therefore find
in your heart to repent, it is possible you may obtain mercy.” He has refer-
red to the case of Dorcas Hoar, wherein upon her confession, Hoar’s
execution, the date of which had already been set, was postponed “until
further notice,” but even Gragg has admitted that at the end of October the
fate of the confessed remained unclear.43
Winter was in the air, and prisons in Salem, Ipswich, Boston, Cambridge,
and Charlestown, already dark and dank, unheated and unhealthy, were
overflowing to the point where private contractors were being hired to care
for many of the prisoners in their homes, barns, or other buildings. No
such crime wave had ever hit the colony and the system was simply not
prepared for it. Sarah Osburn and Roger Toothaker of Billerica, Ann
Foster of Andover, and Sarah Good’s newborn had already died in captivity,
and others were seriously ill. Phips was not ready to see the death toll rise any
further.44
Phips turned to the petitions he had received for the release of various
prisoners. Some were quite young, like Dorothy and Abigail Faulkner, who
were ten and eight years old, respectively; Stephen and Abigail Johnson,
who were thirteen and eleven years old, respectively; and Sarah Carrier,
who was eight years old. Others were the mothers of large families, and it
was reported that their incarceration had placed a burden on their commu-
nities to care for their children. The list of such special petitions was long,
and Phips found it persuasive. He reconsidered the evidence used in those
and other cases, and when it was only primarily spectral he released those
prisoners on bond into the custody of their families. Some remained in jail,
but Phips made their care and well-being the responsibility of the judges.
They were not to be allowed to suffer.45
In his second letter to the Privy Council, dated February 21, 1693, Phips
continued to explain what he had done. He reported that in the weeks after
his October communication, he had grown even more skeptical of the Court
of Oyer and Terminer’s procedures, especially of their use of spectral evidence,
and he had begun to fear that, as many had charged, it had condemned inno-
cent people. Indicating that he was not the only person to have reached that
conclusion, Phips wrote that the Deputy Governor and Chief Justice Stoughton
had nevertheless “persisted vigorously in the same method, to the great
dissatisfaction and disturbance of the people,” forcing Phips to put an end
to the Court, fearing that if he did not “many innocent people might other-wise
perish.”46
There being at least fifty people who were still in prison, suffering from
“the extreme cold” and too poor to take better care of themselves, Phips
continued, he resolved to take two further steps.47 First, as has been noted,
he released on bail those against whom only spectral evidence had been
used. Second, he decided to bring all of the outstanding cases to resolution.
As certain judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer had acknowledged
that “their former proceedings were too violent and not grounded upon a
right foundation,” and intimated that if they were to sit again they would
proceed differently, Phips was encouraged to establish a second court. First,
however, they found it necessary to clarify the law concerning witchcraft.48
The Superior Court of Judicature

On December 14, the General Court passed a new measure intended to
provide a better “explanation of the law against witchcraft,” “more parti-
cular direction” for its execution, better restraint of such offenses, and more
severe punishment for those found guilty of such crimes. At the same time,
however, following the example set by England in its legislation on witch-
craft, Massachusetts recognized that the uses to which witchcraft could be
made varied in terms of the degree of harm done, and that the punishment
in each case should vary as well, befitting the crime.49
In summary, those who were found to invoke any evil or wicked spirit;
covenant with such spirit; raise from the grave any dead person; use any
part of the body of a deceased individual in any manner of witchcraft; or
practice any witchcraft, whereby any person would be killed, wasted, or
lamed, “shall suffer pains of death.” Anyone who was convicted of employ-
ing witchcraft to discover treasures; provoke anyone to “unlawful love”;
destroy or impair the property of others; or hurt another person would be
imprisoned for one year and made to stand in the pillory wearing on his or
her breast a sign announcing the nature of the crime.50 If this law had been
in effect earlier, it would likely have made a difference for some of the
condemned. It would also have made a difference in the future, if the trials
to come had resulted in guilty verdicts and the law applied in sentencing,
but that was not to be the case.
On November 25 the Massachusetts General Court, as part of its
recreating its judicial system under its new charter, established the Superior
Court of Judicature. On December 12, it passed a new witchcraft statue, which
essentially followed current English law. And on December 16, the General
Court appointed special sessions of the Superior Court of Judicature to finish
the trials. Appointed to the Court were Oyer and Terminer holdovers William
Stoughton, who would once again preside, and Samuel Sewall, John Richards,
and Wait Winthrop. Added was Thomas Danforth, who had from time to time
sat with Hathorne and Corwin in the preliminary examinations, but who had
subsequently become a critic of the Court.51
Three major procedural changes were made. First, the location of the
trials of the Superior Court would no longer be limited to Salem, but rather
circulated from Essex County to Middlesex and Suffolk counties, according
to the origin of the defendant. Second, the jurors impanelled in each location
would be new and different, and as per the terms of the new colonial char-
ter, not drawn exclusively from the Puritan church membership rolls. And
third, the judges would limit their use of spectral evidence and the tests of
sight and touch. Such evidence could be admitted as presumptive evidence,
but it was no longer to be used exclusively, or even primarily, to convict.52
The Superior Court met on January 3, 1693, to consider the indictments
of some fifty-two of those charged with witchcraft. It met in Salem until
January 13, in Charlestown on January 31, in Boston on April 25, and in
Ipswich in May (the exact dates were not recorded). In a notable reversal of
the pattern set by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, wherein all who
appeared before the Court were convicted, forty-nine of the fifty-two cases
heard by the Superior Court resulted either in acquittal or dismissal. In
Salem, the Superior Court handled twenty cases between January 4 and 13.
Only three cases resulted in conviction, and that was on the basis of con-
fessions made by the accused. They were Sarah, the wife of Samuel Ward-
well, who had confessed; Mary Post, called “senseless and ignorant,” but
about whom little else is known; and Elizabeth Johnson Jr., whom her
grandfather Francis Dane called “simplish at best.”53
Before leaving Salem for Charlestown, Chief Justice Stoughton turned to
five of those who had been condemned by the Court of Oyer and Terminer,
but who had been temporarily reprieved. Elizabeth Procter had delivered her
baby and was ready to be hanged. The rest were confessing witches. Their
testimony, being almost entirely spectral, was no longer needed, and
Stoughton appears to have intended to end the Court’s practice of sparing
those who confessed. They had, after all, admitted their guilt. Governor
Phips, however, was hesitant to allow even those convictions to proceed. He
sought the advice of the King’s Attorney General, Thomas Newton, who
concluded that the evidence against them hardly differed from that used
against those who had already been cleared, whereupon Phips signed repri-
eves for all eight.54
Stoughton took Phips’s action as a direct rebuke of his conduct of the
trials. When on January 31 Stoughton, who was sitting on the bench in
Charlestown, heard what Phips had done, Phips wrote, he was so “enraged
and filled with passionate anger” that he left the bench.55 According to
Robert Calef, Stoughton was overheard to explain that they (the judges)
“were in a way to have cleared the land” of witches, but that they had been
prevented from doing so. “Who it is that obstructs the course of justice I
know not,” he continued, but, he concluded, “The Lord be merciful to the
country.” At that point, Stoughton “went off the bench and came no more
to that court,” Calef reported. He did return, however, on April 25, when
the Court convened in Boston to hear cases from Suffolk County.56
In Stoughton’s absence and even after his return, the Superior Court con-
tinued without fail to clear all who were brought before it. Eighty-one-year-old
Sarah Daston was freed, against whom, one of the judges later admitted, there
was more evidence than any who had been hanged. So to was another of the
confessors, Mary Watkins, who reportedly was a deranged indentured servant,
and who, upon being arrested, confessed and tried to strangle herself. Remi-
niscent of the Rebecca Nurse preliminary hearing, the jury of the Superior
Court in the Watkins case initially returned an innocent verdict, and the judges
returned the verdict to the jury for reconsideration. In this case, however, the
jury stood its ground.57
Finally, in May, Governor Phips issued a proclamation of general pardon,
providing for the release of those still in jail and for the return of refugees
from the law. A mere pardon, however, was not enough in some cases to
free everyone from prison. Prison fees remained to be paid. In seventeenth-
century Massachusetts, prisoners paid for their expenses – food, fuel,
clothes, and transportation to and from court, for example – while they
availed themselves of the local prison accommodations. Even if they were
found not guilty, they still could not leave until they had paid those fees and
another fee to cover their discharge. Prices varied from prison to prison, but
by one estimate, based on an average stay of four and one-half months, a
prisoner faced fees amounting to just over four pounds, six shillings. Some,
however, were forced to pay much more. Tituba, whose confession helped
launch the events of 1692, but which she later recanted and was never
indicted, was required to pay about seven pounds. When Parris refused to
pay her prison fees, she was sold to another master and disappeared from
the historical record.58
Given the modest means of most families of the accused, such bills were
considerable. Farms had to be mortgaged in some cases to pay for the
release of loved ones, but a few had no farms to mortgage and still others
had no families to act on their behalf. No one, for example, was interested
in the previously mentioned Sarah Daston, who, although found not guilty,
remained in prison until she died. The same fate might have befallen Mary
Watkins had she not asked the jailer to find her a new master, which he did,
from Virginia. As previously noted, Tituba was sold to a new owner, but
his name and her fate thereafter are unknown.59
Margaret Jacobs, as a final example, who had had the courage to recant
her confession on the eve of her grandfather’s execution, seemed destined to
remain in prison. Old George Jacobs had remembered Margaret in his will,
but the will of a condemned witch, especially where it bequeathed to
another condemned witch, was not a valid contract. Margaret’s father had
fled and had not yet returned, and her mother, although acquitted in early
January and released, remained distracted and penniless, her other children
having been taken in by neighbors. One day, however, the story goes, after
eleven months in jail, a stranger heard of Margaret Jacob’s plight and he – a
person named Gammon, believed to be a fisherman – paid her fees, setting
her free.60
Even being released did not solve the problems of some of the accused.
Elizabeth Procter, for example, had been found guilty and was sentenced to
be executed, but never hanged. Her escape from the gallows, however, and
even her pardon did not change her legal status. In the eyes of the law, she
was a convicted felon and attainted, or “corrupted in blood,” as it was often
said. She had no existence in the eyes of the law, and therefore she could
claim none of John Procter’s property, not even her dower. It would take
more than a decade for Elizabeth Procter and many others like her, as we
shall see in the next chapter, to resolve such legal problems.61
The Magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Terminer,

Guilty as Charged?
Before concluding this chapter, a final brief assessment should be offered
about the Salem magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Terminer, which
condemned every individual that came before it and executed nineteen of
those so condemned, twenty if Giles Corey is counted.
As Emerson Baker has reminded us in his study of the court, the judges
represented the elite of Massachusetts, as measured by their political, mili-
tary, economic, and educational accomplishments. Further, over the past
thirty years, although fourteen Massachusetts residents had been tried for
witchcraft, only one, Mary Glover, had been found guilty and executed.
Most continued to believe in witchcraft, but a growing number had begun
to question the means by which witches could be identified. So, how can we
explain the court’s change of direction in 1692? Historian have offered sev-
eral possible explanations, but none can be cited as definitive.62
The reader is reminded of the far different results of the considerable
majority of witch trials of seventeenth-century New England. But for further
comparison, the reader is directed to a second witch-hunt that occurred in
New England in 1692. It took place in Fairfield County, Connection – far to
the South of Salem, nearly in New York, but nevertheless populated by New
England Puritans. Richard Godbeer has chronicled that far less well-known,
but instructive, occurrence, which took a decidedly different course from the
panic in Massachusetts.
In contrast to the magistrates that presided over the courts in Massachu-
setts, Godbeer found that their Connecticut counterparts “refused to make
hasty judgment about the accused and insisted on weighing carefully the
evidence” against the accused. “If witch suspects were to hang, their guilt
had to be irrefutable,” he wrote, and that made all the difference. In the end,
the court recognized only one accuser and charged only two of the accused.
Following a carefully controlled trial, as to the uses of evidence, the jury
found one of the accused not guilty. It condemned the other, but with the
magistrates’ support her conviction was overturned on appeal.63
It is important to note that the Connecticut trials did not start until September
1692, thereby allowing the magistrates to learn from what was happening in
Salem – to learn from the mistakes that were already becoming apparent. As
a result, what happened in Fairfield County was quite different from what
occurred in Salem. It was consistent with what had happened for decades in
Puritan New England, once again making clear that Salem was the glaring
exception to the rule.
With this history in mind, and reviewing the proceedings as best we can,
given the loss of the actual trial transcripts, it is difficult to argue against the
commonly held proposition that the actions of both the magistrates and
judges were anything less than a miscarriage of justice. It might perhaps be
argued that the final decision in each case was left to a jury of peers, but the
magistrates and judges established the rules of procedure and the admissi-
bility of evidence and instructed the jury regarding its duty, even to the
point, as we have seen, of sending a jury back to reconsider its initial inno-
cent verdict.64
Although it was standard procedure for the magistrates and judges to per-
sonally examine defendants, even in a prosecutorial fashion, it would seem
that they were uncommonly zealous in their questioning. By all reports, lead-
ing and ensnaring questions and even a browbeating deportment were ever-
present. Assumption of guilt was clearly the unofficial rule, and confessions
were vigorously pressed as the best evidence of guilt. Although offensive to
our sense of justice today, however, these were not uncommon procedures
and at what point the Court crossed over the line of acceptable behavior, if
indeed it ever did, is unclear. It may well be, as Cotton Mather later reported,
that the judges “consulted the precedents of former times, and precepts laid
down by learned writers about witchcraft” and acted accordingly.65
Among the specific procedural points often questioned by historians is the
marshal’s being encouraged to watch every move of the defendants and to
report on those who might be seen as causing the afflictions of the young
girls, thereby lending credence to the girls’ courtroom antics. It has been
noted that accusers continually made private communications to the judges
both before and throughout the trials, which were in turn used to put the
defendants, who were unrepresented by counsel and unprepared in the law,
at a disadvantage. In some cases, as we have seen, false testimony was detected
yet unpunished, and the witnesses were allowed to continue to testify, while
recanted confessions had no effect on verdicts already rendered.
Although beyond the magistrates’ and judges’ control to an extent, the
atmosphere of the hearings and trials was clearly prejudicial. The number
and nature of witnesses and depositions placed before the Court was
alarming, and as a whole they both reflected and exacerbated the intense
fear that had come to seize the people in and around Salem village. And that
intense fear – indeed, near panic – spilled over into the courtroom.
As should be clear, however, the most egregious miscarriage of justice,
intended or not, was the use, or abuse, of spectral evidence. The repeated
warnings of those who feared that the magistrates and judges were misusing
spectral evidence have already been treated at some length. As early as May
31, 1692, Cotton Mather had written Judge John Richards of the Court of
Oyer and Terminer: “I must humbly beg you … [to] not lay more stress
upon pure specter testimony than it will bear … [as] it is very certain that
the devils have sometimes represented the shapes of persons not only inno-
cent but very virtuous.” So too we have seen Hathorne and Corwin state
publicly on more than one occasion during the preliminary hearings that,
contrary to what others had said, they did not believe the Devil could
assume the shape of an innocent person. The evidence suggests that at least
most of the judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer concurred.66
Neither the magistrates nor judges admitted to having violated the rules
of procedure on the use of spectral evidence. They pointed to the over-
whelming amount of evidence, including the dozens of confessions, that, to
their and their jury’s way of thinking, served to corroborate spectral evi-
dence. To be fair, it is not always clear how much emphasis the judges and
jury placed on one or the other. Further, as we have seen, neither civil nor
clerical authorities ever actually charged the Court with the improper use of
spectral evidence, but merely warned of its possible abuse in an almost the-
oretical manner. They continually praised the Court for its handling of the
cases it had heard.
In the end, however, a fair and dispassionate reading of the evidence –
albeit more than three hundred years after the fact – leads to the inevitable
conclusion that the magistrates and judges of the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner were guilty as charged. As Charles Upham has put it, in its use of
spectral evidence, “innocent persons were slaughtered by a dogma in the
mind of an obstinate judge.”67 Nowhere is that made more evident than in
the dramatic reversal of fortune of those who faced the Superior Court, as
compared to those who were tried by the Court of Oyer and Terminer.
As it was explained earlier, conviction for the practice of witchcraft under
Massachusetts law depended not only on proof of harm, or maleficia, but
also on evidence of diabolical pact or of the accused’s having entered into a
covenant with the Devil to secure those powers he or she employed in that
act of doing harm. As has also been noted, the difficulty of establishing such
a case in a court of law where spectral evidence was limited, as it was in
Massachusetts prior to 1692, resulted in the low rate of conviction that
marked the seventeenth century. Witnesses other than the afflicted could
testify to occurrences that pointed to the possibility of such diabolical col-
lusion, but only the girls could provide any special and direct knowledge of
it, provided, of course, that their spectral sightings were allowed, as they
were in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Once that was eliminated, the
trials collapsed.68
It is important to note that none of the judges, or likely even their most severe
critics, questioned the reality of witchcraft or that something demonic was
happening in 1692. What changed was the confidence of both, but especially the
latter, in the possibility of determining who was responsible for what had tran-
spired. Increasingly, people were coming to believe that the detection of such
supernatural malevolence lay beyond human comprehension. As Samuel Will-
ard came to conclude, the Court should not accept any evidence provided “by
extraordinary revelations from God, or by the insinuation of the Devil.” Testi-
mony should be based on “that which one man can know concerning another by
his senses, and that according to the true nature, and use of them.”69 Historian
Richard Godbeer has suggested that in reaching that conclusion, given that
charges of witchcraft necessarily dealt with matters that were intrinsically
supernatural, the courts of New England were anticipating the position that
“legal prosecution for witchcraft was inherently impracticable.”70
We must remind ourselves, lest we judge others too harshly in hindsight,
that the Salem magistrates and judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer,
like those they condemned, were the product, if not also the victims, of their
time. Much as events of the closing decades of the seventeenth century
shook New England, Puritans’ confidence in the fundamental aspect of their
faith – their federal covenant with God – the crisis of 1692 convinced them
that they were a people under siege. Many had come to agree with those
such as Samuel Parris, who pictured God’s chosen people as being engaged
in a great cosmic battle with the Devil to see whose will would prevail and
what would be the fate of their “Bible Commonwealth.”
Finally, Emerson Baker has added a political dimension to attempts to
defend the actions of the court and other leading figures, led in large part by
Governor Phips with the collaboration of Cotton Mather. In brief, both the
new Royal Charter of 1691 and appointment of Phips were jeopardized by
the events of 1692. If Phips could not justify his and others’ actions,
including the imprisonment of over 150 colonists and the executions, both
he and the charter stood to be recalled and the Puritan “errand” ended.
Thus, the importance of Phips’s London correspondence, Mather’s Wonders
of the Invisible World, the restructuring of the court, and the governor’s
attempt to silence any further published criticism of the trials.71
If in 1692, New England Puritans, including the Salem magistrates and
judges of the Court of Oyer and Teminer, were zealous in their defense or
relentless and unforgiving in their prosecution of those they saw as the
enemy, it was because most likely they believed that they were observing
God’s will in an attempt to reincur God’s blessing on his errant people.
Moreover, to listen to Cotton Mather, they were doing so belatedly, thereby
giving their actions an added, if not desperate, sense of urgency. Mather had
warned them that the end was near, that the Second Coming was upon
them, and, as all God-fearing Puritans knew, prior to Christ’s Second
Coming, the Devil would come to destroy Christ’s church and in the process
seduce even some of Christ’s people into his service.
And What About the Afflicted?

Having put on trial the magistrates, judges, and governor, we return, briefly,
to the afflicted, who along with those who supported them served as accu-
sers, and who have been commonly charged. As discussed in Chapter 4,
while admitting that the list of possible explanations for the behavior of the
afflicted is endless, Emerson Baker has recently placed the explanations into
the following basic categories: “physical ailment, mental illness, group hys-
teria, and outright fakery.” Mary Beth Norton has grouped the afflicted into
three groups: girls aged thirteen or younger; people in their teens or early
twenties, including several servants, and at least one man; and two women
in their thirties.72
Baker argues that at least some of the afflicted likely suffered from what
today is called “conversion disorder,” a mass psychogenic illness wherein a
person’s emotional stress can be converted into physical symptoms. By way
of example, he points to the Reverend Parris’s nine-year-old daughter, Betty,
who may well have been traumatized by her father’s war on Satan and
demonizing of his enemies in Salem Village. He also points to Ann Putnam
Jr., the daughter of one of the village’s leading families, fully supported, if
not encouraged, by her father, Thomas Putnam Jr., a leader in the witch-
hunt, and his wife, the likely mentally troubled Ann Putman Sr. Soon to join
the first afflicted were young women from lesser social ranks, mostly servant
girls, including Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Warren, and Mercy Lewis, who were
orphans. Residing at the bottom rung of society their future prospects were dim,
and surviving evidence points to lives marked by trauma, including verbal and
physical abuse.73
Baker asserts that “ultimately, the question is whether the afflictions, and
therefore the accusations, were genuine or deliberate acts of fraud.” Baker
concludes that “more fraud took place than many cared to admit after the
trials ended.” Nevertheless, Baker qualifies this conclusion by allowing that
while some historians have argued that the girls were rebelling against a
repressive patriarchal society, the reverse could be true: “That through their
accusations they were upholding it.” He suggests that it may be the case that
a young girl suffering from an undiagnosed affliction might have “felt a great
obligation to protect her community and to do what her elders and
superiors clearly thought was right: help convict people of witchcraft.” But,
of course, there are those who have come to believe that the girls were
merely seeking attention.74
Historians Bernard Rosenthal and Peter Hoffer have made strong cases
for deliberate fraud, arguing that it was widespread and providing several
examples to support their claim. Among those examples are Deodat Law-
son’s sermon on March 24, 1692, in which he told the congregation that
“some of the afflicted, as they were striving in their fits, in open court, have
(by invisible means) had their wrists bound fast together with a real cord, so
as it could hardly be taken off without cutting. Some afflicted have been
found with their arms tied, and hanged upon a hook, from whence others
have been forced to take them down that they might not expire in that
posture.” How could the afflicted have their wrists so tightly bound and
their arms similarly bound and placed on a hook, Rosenthal asks, unless
there was a conspiracy among the accusers.75
Adding to the case for fraud is the finding that the afflicted – even the young
girls – were well versed in witchcraft as a phenomenon, including symptoms of
supposed bewitching and affliction. At noted from the start, the Salem witch
trials were only one event in a series of witch-hunts dating back centuries, and
reports of outbreaks were readily available to the accused either in written
form or by oral transmission. Chapter 2 discusses several well-known trials in
late-seventeenth-century New England, including the Knapp and Goodwin
cases, wherein the afflicted children acted out behaviors closely resembling
those of the girls of Salem. Mary Beth Norton has argued that “consciously or
unconsciously, the Salem Village afflicted had incorporated the previously
recorded behaviors and their own repertoires.” Peter Hoffer was more direct in
calling the girls “a gang of juvenile delinquents.”76
Finally, Mary Beth Norton has made a strong connection between the
witchcraft outbreak and King William’s War (1688–1697 in the colonies),
which raged on the Massachusetts northern frontier in what would become
the state of Maine but at times came perilously close to Essex County. Many
New Englanders had long considered Native Americans to be “minions” of
Satan, as articulated by Cotton Mather in 1699, when he blamed them for
both the war and the Salem witch trials. In addition to the connection
between the war and charges brought against George Burroughs, Norton
and others have pointed out that Abigail Hobbs, Mercy Lewis, Susannah
Sheldon, and Sarah Churchill were all refugees of the war in Maine. They
had been forced to flee, had their homes destroyed, and lost family members
in the war. Mercy Lewis, for one, not only had her parents killed and her
home destroyed, she had been taken captive in 1690, marched to Quebec,
and forced to convert to Catholicism. Upon her release she became a maid
in a Boston household, but she became afflicted after an encounter with an
accused witch in the Boston prison in May 1692.77
In sum, Emerson Baker concludes that many preconditions paved the way
to the “mass hysteria” of 1692. A disastrous and costly war had exacerbated
existing economic, political, and spiritual tensions, all of which was made
worse by Samuel Parris’s “combative and unyielding nature.” He points to
evidence of fraud and “the possibility that some of that person’s actions
were deliberate and willful acts of calumny and deception.” But in the end,
he admits that there are no simple answers.78
One Final Thought When Casting Blame

To sum up, historians will continue to debate who was responsible for the
events of 1692 and their disastrous consequences, but from the perspective
of over a century later, perhaps U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story
struck the appropriate note of caution one should keep in mind when jud-
ging those who condemned the Salem witches to death. On September 18,
1828, in recalling the tragic incident for the people of Salem, he explained:
We may lament, then, the errors of the times, which led to these prosecu-
tions. But surely our ancestors had no special reason for shame in a belief
which had the universal sanction of their own and all former ages; which
consulted in its train philosophers, as well as enthusiasts; which was
graced by the learning of prelates, as well as by the countenance of kings;
which the law supported by its mandates, and the purest judges felt no
compunctions in enforcing. Witch Hill remains forever memorable by this
sad catastrophe, not to perpetuate our dishonor, but as an affecting,
enduring proof of human infirmity; a proof that perfect justice belongs to
one judgment-seat only – that which is linked to the throne of God.79
Notes
Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 343; Elaine G. Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem:
Devilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies (New York: New York University Press,
1996), 172–173.
6 Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), I: 189.
bridge University Press, 2014), 549, 742–743; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 408.
8 Larry Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis (New York: Praeger, 1992), 265; Starkey,
The Devil in Massachusetts, 214.
9 Thomas Brattle, Letter of Thomas Brattle (1692), in Burr, ed., Narratives of the
Witchcraft Cases, 178–179; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 453.
Brattle, Letter, 182.
14 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 363; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 213–214.
15 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 447–449; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 216;
Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 483–484; Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015), 36–37.
18 Samuel Willard, Some Miscellany Observations on Our Present Debates
Respecting Witchcraft in a Dialogue Between S and B (Philadelphia, PA: William
Bradford, 1692), 6–9.
19 David C. Brown, “The Salem Witchcraft Trials: Samuel Willard’s Some Mis-
cellany Observations,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 122 (July 1986):
215; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 213.
25 Brattle, Letter, 184–185; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 140.
26 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 686–687; William Phips, “Letters of Governor
Phips,” in Burr, Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 197.
27 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 686–687; Phips, “Letters of Governor
Phips,” 197.
28 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 686–687; Phips, “Letters of Governor Phips,”
197; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 176.
30 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men
(Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1693), 17–20, 23–24, 40.
31 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience, 1, 2, 7, 33.
32 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience, 34, 45–46, 51.
33 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience, 34.
34 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 214; Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience,
32, 66. See also: Evan Haefeli, “Dutch New York and the Salem Witch Trials:
Some New Evidence,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 110
(Part 2, 2000): 278–279.
37 Discussed in Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 172.
38 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 225–226; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis,
168.
39 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 226; Haefeli, “Dutch New York and the
Salem Witch Trials,” 294–301.
41 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 222–223; Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story:
Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 183.
42 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcript
of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692 (New York:
Da Capo Press, 1977), I: 24; Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a
Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987),
278, note 125.
44 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 221; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 126,
134. On jails see: Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 23–24.
47 Thomas Brattle estimated that there were about fifty confessors alone in jail.
Brattle, Letter, 173. Phips, “Letters,” 200.
50 Second offenses in the latter category could result in death. Records of the Salem
Witch-Hunt, 713–714.
51 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 227; Peter Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciplines:
Makers of the Salem Witch Trials (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1996), 188–189.
736–798, 801–804, 812–813, 814–828.
setts, 228–229.
56 Calef, More Wonders, 382–383; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 229.
57 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 229; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 832
813, 818, 829.
58 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 230; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 126–
127; Breslaw, Tituba, 174–175, 374–377, 388, 398, 401–403; Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft, 42.
59 Breslaw, Tituba, 175.
62 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 162–170, 175–176.
63 Richard Godbeer, Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005), 7–8.
64 For a brief discussion of attempts by the grand jury to exercise restraint, see
Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 187; and Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciples, 169–171.
65 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 361; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 183–187.
66 “Cotton Mather to John Richards, May 31, 1692,” Selected Letters of Cotton
Mather, ed. Kenneth Silverman (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University
Press, 1971), 36. See also “The Return of the Several Ministers Consulted, June
15, 1692,” in Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft: A Doc-
Boston University Press, 1993), 118.
69 Willard, Miscellany Observations, 7.
71 The Massachusetts Charter survived, and although weakened, so too did the
Puritan Commonwealth. Phips, however, was recalled in 1694. Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft, 201–208.
72 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 98–99; Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 8–10, 305–
306, 321–322.
73 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 100–101; Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 22, 48–50,
159; Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciples, 92–95. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum
have pointed out that the behavior of the afflicted in 1692 resembled that of the
youths of Northampton, Massachusetts in 1734–1735 during the First Great
Awakening, only to be seen then as evidence of sinners experiencing spiritual
rebirth rather than witchcraft. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Pos-
sessed: The Salem Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1974), 27–30.
74 Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 103–104, 113; Marilynne K. Roach, “That Child,
Betty Parris,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 124 (January 1988): 1–27.
75 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 38–39; Hoffer, The Devil’s Disciple, 89–90.
76 Baker, A Storm or Witchcraft, 112–113; Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 54; Hoffer,
The Devil’s Disciples, 97.
77 Norton, In the Devil’s Snare, 176–190. On the connection between witchcraft and
the frontier, see Emerson Baker and James Kences, “Maine, Indian Land Spec-
ulation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692,” Maine History, 40
(No. 3, 2001): 161, 183.
78 Baker, Storm of Witchcraft, 123. From time to time, students of the Salem witch
trials have offered up medical explanations, such as encephalitis and Lyme dis-
ease, none of which has survived closer scrutiny. See for example: Linnda R.
Caporael, “Ergotism: The Satan Loosed in Salem?” Science 192, no. 4234 (April 2,
1976) 21–26.
10 “Ruined in the Mistaken Management
of the Terrible Affair Called
Witchcraft”
The trials were over, but Salem’s ordeal was not. In his February 1693 letter
to the Crown, Governor William Phips reported that by his actions “the
black cloud that [had] threatened this province with destruction” had dis-
sipated.1 In some ways it had. Miraculously, the accusing girls had fallen
silent, even after the accused were released from jail. Logically, the release
of so many witches should have led to an onslaught of affliction. Instead,
they seemed to rest easy. The people of Massachusetts had not ceased to
believe in witches, and some wanted the trials to continue.2 But even they
were no doubt confused by just what had been accomplished during those
horrendous months of 1692. Even if at one point they believed that in
hunting witches they were observing God’s will, many had begun to fear
that the hunt had gone awry.
Cotton Mather was one of the first to begin the process of reassessment with
his The Wonders of the Invisible World. On an unknown date prior to Sep-
tember 20, 1692, Mather, Stephen Sewall, John Higginson, John Hathorne, and
William Stoughton met at Samuel Sewall’s house in Boston. Governor Phips had
asked Mather to prepare a report on the trials, and he had convened the meeting
to decide whether to include, and thus make even more widely known to the
public, the evidence presented in the several witch trials.3
Although the hearings and trials had been open to the public, nothing of
any substance had appeared in print about them since Deodat Lawson pub-
lished his Brief and True Narrative the previous spring, before the Court of
Oyer and Terminer convened. Since then, rumors abounded, many of them
ill-informed, and the time was right for an official report on what the Court
had accomplished. It was to be an interim report, as the judges expected to
go forward with the trials in October, and although there were some signs
of doubt among those who met in Boston that September, most had little
doubt that the Court was adequately performing its judicial duties.4
Cotton Mather and His “Wonders of the Invisible World”

Cotton Mather, who had been gathering information about the Salem witch
trials for some time, agreed to prepare the text. On September 20, he wrote
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-11
228 “Ruined in the Mistaken Management of the Terrible Affair …”
to Stephen Sewall of Salem, seeking further information and in the process
making his intentions clear. He explained that “with all sorts of objections”
having been raised concerning the trials, he felt obliged to prepare a report
whereby he might be able “to assist in lifting up a standard against the
infernal enemy.” As he readily admitted: “I have indeed set myself to coun-
termine the whole plot of the devil, against New England, in every branch of
it.” In particular, Mather asked that Sewall “intimate over again” what he
had previously told Mather “of the awe which is upon the hearts of your
juries … unto the validity of the spectral evidences.” He requested Sewall’s
observations concerning “the confessions and the credibility of what they
[the girls] assert,” “things evidently preternatural in the witchcrafts,” and
whatever else he might recommend as “entertainment for an inquisitive
person, that entirely loves you and Salem.”5
Promising not to use what Sewall might write in any way prejudicial to
the “designs” of “those two excellent persons, Mr. Hale and Mr. Noyes,”
Mather urged Sewall in his writing to imagine him “as obstinate a Sadducee
and witch-advocate as any among us”:
Address me as one that believed nothing reasonable; and when you have so
knocked me down, in a specter so unlike me, you will enable me to box it
about among my neighbors, till it comes – I know not where at last.
Mather closed by noting that “His Excellency the Governor” had com-
manded him to ask the favor of Sewall.6
By early October, when Governor Phips returned to Boston, Mather’s
report was circulating among the learned and powerful. William Stoughton
thought so much of it that he provided a laudatory preface. Phips borrowed
entire sections for his report to England, but he nevertheless discouraged its
publication. Brattle had just published his attack on the trials, and Phips did
not want to encourage any further public discord over the subject. He would
not approve of its publication until the new year, when the trials had been
resumed on a new and different basis and the “general jail delivery” had
begun. By then, attitudes had changed considerably, and Mather’s defense of
the Court of Oyer and Terminer was received quite differently from how it
might have been the previous October.7
Mather’s narrative was as detailed an account of the trials as would
appear for decades to come. It included a wide range of information,
including sermons, extracts of other works on witchcraft, Mather’s own
thoughts on events, a narrative overview of the trials, and a full and
accurate account of the examinations and trials of five witches he deemed
representative: George Burroughs, Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Eli-
zabeth How, and Martha Carrier. Few could quarrel with the accuracy of
his report, at least regarding what he chose to include; by the time it was
published, however, many found fault with what he chose to leave out,
and with its tone.8
“Ruined in the Mistaken Management of the Terrible Affair …” 229
Figure 10.1 Photograph of a portrait of Cotton Mather (1663–1728), an important

figure in the Salem witch trials.
© Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo
Mather avoided what his readers would come to see as embarrassing

aspects of the trials – Rebecca Nurse’s initial acquittal, John Procter’s public
stance, and the troubling case of Mary Esty, for example. He brooked no
criticism of the Court, not even for its use of spectral evidence, though by
the time Wonders appeared many important figures had spoken out against
it. That Mather himself had gone on record as urging caution in its use did
not enter significantly into his account. If he had gained any sympathy for
the accused, if he had had any doubts about their wholesale condemnation,
he showed no evidence of it.9
Unfortunately for Mather the timing of his The Wonders of the Invisible
World was critical. As we have seen, the tide was turning against the witch
trials, and critiques were appearing at the highest levels. At about the same
time Cotton Mather was completing his Wonders, for example, Increase
Mather was preparing Cases of Conscience. When it appeared, Cotton made
his fears plain; he warned that people would say that “I run against my own
father and all the ministers in the country.” Further, he feared his father’s
account would be used by opponents to the trials – “witch advocates” he
called them – to condemn the Court of Oyer and Terminer.10 Increase’s
response to those who saw him as repudiating his son’s defense of the
judges, however, was to add the following postscript to his work: “I perused
and approved of that book before it was printed. And nothing but my relation
to him hindered me from recommending it to the world.”11
Although the bringing of charges in the Salem witch trials had ended, they
continued to be brought elsewhere, and Cotton Mather was prominently
involved in three of them. The first involved Mercy Short, the seventeen-
year-old servant-maid of Boston. Short had recently returned from captivity
among the Indians, and during the spring of 1692 she had visited and
mocked Sarah Good in her Boston prison, only to be afflicted ever since.
Whereas the others of the accusing girls had been relieved of their afflictions,
and even though Good had been hanged, Short’s trauma continued.12
In December 1692, Mather began to study Mercy Short. From her he learned
that the Devil was “a short and black man – a wretch no taller than an ordinary
walking staff.” The Devil was not black, however, Mather recorded, but rather
one with the complexion of an Indian. He wore a high-crowned hat, wore his
hair long and straight, had one cloven foot, and possessed eyes that glowed
like the flames of a lantern. On a more personal level, Mather even learned
that Short’s specters had injured his wife and child, who died shortly after
its birth.13
At times, Short’s affliction took the form of long fasts. At other times,
Mather reported, she was seared by flames and her visitors reported smelling
brimstone and seeing the burns on her flesh, although they soon disappeared.
And she was not beyond name-calling. She cried out against several indivi-
duals, especially those with whom she had recently quarreled or who dared
question her behavior. She even named Mather at one point. Mather’s
reaction, however, was quite different from what it had been months earlier.
He treated his being charged as a compliment, attesting to the high regard in
which the Devil clearly held him. And he resolved, and urged all others present
to resolve, to keep the other names to themselves. Short’s name-calling, Mather
concluded, was the result of delusions caused by the Devil, or, to put it another
way, of her being possessed by the Devil rather than her being afflicted by
witches. The difference was crucial.14
Mercy finally came out of her trance in March 1693, whereupon Mather
completed his account of the affair under the title “A Brand Plucked Out of
the Burning.” He never published it, however, perhaps sensing that the
timing was wrong. Or maybe he was embarrassed by the fate to which
Short fell upon the completion of his study. As one account put it, “The sad
truth was that when the Devil was cast out of her, seven others took its
place, these being devils of the more common and carnal sort.” Mercy
would not make a very good example of those martyred on the Devil’s altar
after all.15
The second post-Salem trials case of possession to involve Cotton Mather
occurred several months later, but closer to home. In September 1693,
Mather visited Salem to gather information for the completion of his
magnus opus Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). His purpose was to pro-
vide a history of God’s divine will made manifest in New England, but the
Devil’s presence was not to be ignored. While visiting Salem, Mather
became interested in the case of a Mrs. Carver. Carver (perhaps Dorothy
Carver) had learned from “shining spirits” that “a new storm of witchcraft”
was about to befall the region in chastisement for “the iniquity that was
used in the wilful smothering and covering of the last,” and in order to
change the minds of those who had been so fiercely opposed “to the dis-
covery of that witchcraft.” As the last “storm of witchcraft” had been
smothered, in the minds of many, Carver was not without her supporters.16
Perhaps Mather, although clearly not a pro-Carver person, was less than
convinced that she was entirely wrong. Had not his own wife, who had once
had to smother a laugh at the sight of the afflictions of Martha Goodwin, at the
very time the judges were dismissing the witches of Salem, had a diabolic vision
while sitting on her porch and in consequence given birth to a malformed
short-lived child? While Mather was in Salem, had not the Devil interfered
directly in his attempt to deliver two sermons by stealing their written texts?17
Still Mather kept his thoughts on the Carver affair to himself.
Finally, there was the case of seventeen-year-old Margaret Rule, who
lived in Mather’s own Boston neighborhood. Perhaps most intriguing to
Mather in this case was that Margaret Rule, although living in Boston, was
able to explain what had happened to him in Salem. The eight specters that
had tormented her, Rule explained, told her they had stolen the sermons
Mather had lost! And in October the missing manuscripts were found scat-
tered along the streets of Lynn, perfectly preserved. It seems, quipped one
source, that “it was not given creatures covenanted to the Devil to keep a
hold on a thing so holy.”18
Margaret Rule’s powers were too much for Mather to ignore. Her phy-
sical tortures had been preceded by a spiritual phase in which she believed
she was damned. Now she was the victim of witches who urged her to sign
the Devil’s book. She was resisting, as witnesses to her heroic struggles
attested, in a struggle so dramatic that she became the theatrical event of
Boston. When he treated Rule, Mather usually cleared the room of all
spectators, who upon occasion numbered nearly thirty or more, including
his father. Occasionally, he did not, and that led to his undoing.19
Rule’s behavior mimicked that of the girls of Salem village. Early on, the
Devil held her mouth closed for nine days, except for brief periods during
which her caretakers could administer some rum. Later, witnesses reported
that upon occasion Rule was stuck full of pins. Six men signed affidavits
that they had seen her “pulled to the ceiling by invisible hands,” whereupon
it had taken all of their combined strength to pull her back to bed. Mather
himself reported that he grabbed for something on Rule’s pillow, only to
feel an imp, which got away.20
Rule had visions from which she was able to forecast the drowning of a
young man, almost exactly as it had happened. It seems the young man was
persuaded by “devils” to jump into the water, from which he was saved.
Rule witnessed the theft of an old man’s will, and she saw the faces of some
of her tormentors, which included an unnamed old woman who had been
arrested during the Salem trials but who had been freed, untried, when the
entire matter collapsed. The rest, she reported, had learned from the earlier
trials to go about veiled so they could not be identified.21
Mather prevailed upon Rule not to publicly proclaim the names of her
afflicters, “lest any good person come to suffer any blast of reputation.”
Name them privately she would, however, and Mather agreed that they
were suspicious. He wrote of those named that they were “the sort of
wretches who for these many years have given over as violent presumption
of witchcraft as perhaps any creatures yet living on the earth.” Still, Mather
did not report them, nor did he publish his report on the Rule case, titled
“Another Brand Pluck’d Out of the Burning.”22
Rather than receiving praise for his treatment of Margaret Rule, however,
Mather was much maligned. As noted earlier, Mather had not always
cleared the room of prying eyes when he treated Rule, and not all of those
who observed were either as well informed as he in the diabolical arts or
were as sympathetic to the cause. One observer of the second type was
Robert Calef, the Boston merchant-turned-critic. In the particular case of
Margaret Rule, where Mather saw possession, Calef saw a woman’s need
for male attention. Rule seems to have liked having Mather stroke her face
and naked breast and belly, Calef observed. It was a “laying on of hands” as
far as Mather was concerned, but not to Calef. Let a women do the same,
he commented, and Rule would cry out, “Don’t you meddle with me.” And
when Mather withdrew, Calef added, Rule insisted that the women in
attendance leave as well, keeping by her side for the night the young man
she considered her “sweetheart.”23
What Calef really resented, even feared, was that by his presence and
serious attention, Mather might dignify Rule’s actions – or Short’s or
Carver’s, for that matter – and rekindle that “bigoted zeal” that had once
served to stir up “a blind and most bloody rage” against innocent people.
So, Calef acted. He circulated his first-hand observations and commentary
about the Rule affair in which he treated Mather brutally, including a
description of Mather’s stroking of Margaret Rule. Mather responded with
a letter, in which he described Calef’s account as containing nothing
“fairly or truly represented” and with a lawsuit for “scandalous libel.”
When the case went to court, however, Mather did not appear, perhaps
fearing the continued unfavorable publicity it would cause, and the case
was dismissed.24
In 1700, the quarrel surfaced again, or perhaps climaxed, when Calef
published his observations on Mather’s behavior not only in the Rule affair
but also during the Salem witch trials. The title, More Wonders of the
Invisible World, was clearly a play on the title of Mather’s earlier work
about the Salem witch trials, and it is due to Calef’s book more than any
other one that the name of Cotton Mather has been ever since inextricably
linked to the tragedy at Salem. As historian Samuel Eliot Morison put it,
Calef “tied a tin can to him [Mather] after the frenzy was over; and it has
rattled and banged through the pages of superficial and popular histories.”25
Increase Mather clearly saw what was happening. When he received a copy
of Calef’s More Wonders, he had it burned in Harvard Yard.26
As later historians would show, Cotton Mather’s role in the Salem witch
trials was more complex than Robert Calef suggested. On the one hand,
Mather believed that the Court, the clergy, and others had uncovered a
diabolical plot against Christianity in Massachusetts, and as a result he
informed Chief Justice William Stoughton of his “zeal to assist” the judges
in their quest to destroy “as wonderful a piece of devilism as has been seen
in the world.”27
On the other hand, Mather had repeatedly advised the judges of the Court of
Oyer and Terminer to use caution in their deliberation, especially in handling
spectral evidence by which the judges condemned so many people. On January
15, 1697, he noted in the privacy of his diary that he was “afflicted” the night
before “with discouraging thoughts, as if unavoidable marks of the Divine
displeasure might overtake my family for not appearing with vigor to stop the
proceedings of the judges when the inexplicable storm from the invisible world
assaulted the country.”28
Mather kept such sentiments to himself, and he soon gained God’s
assurance that “marks of His indignation” would not follow his family, and
that “having the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ” pleading for them,
God’s “goodness and mercy” and salvation would be theirs.29 Posterity on
earth, however, would not be so kind. It would judge him only by his public
statements and actions, and those made him mete for the barbed criticism of
the likes of Robert Calef.
Salem in Ruins
Historians have pointed to the Salem witch trials as sealing the fate of Pur-
itan-dominated New England. At least 156 people had been either formally
accused of witchcraft or cried out upon but not formally charged. Focusing
on Salem, we find the village struggling to heal itself, to pull itself together
after its trying and divisive ordeal. Contemporaries made note of the houses
left uncared for and the fields untended. Breaking out in mid-to-late winter,
the Salem witch trials interrupted the planting season; lasting through the
fall and into the next winter, they caused many of the fields that had been
planted not to be properly cultivated or harvested. Moreover, as previously
noted, the accused or their relatives were occasionally forced to mortgage or
sell their farms in order to meet expenses, while a few left the village altogether.
The Cloyces, the Bishops, and the descendants of Thomas and Edward
Putnam, for example, moved elsewhere.30
Over 170 years later, Charles Upham would observe that “one locality in
the village, which was the scene of this wild and tragic fanaticism,” con-
tinued to bear “the marks of the blight then brought upon it.” It was the
previously thriving old meetinghouse road near the center of Salem village,
which, Upham noted, continued to be dilapidated and marked by “old, gray,
moss-covered stone walls,” the remains of cellars that suggested a once-
considerable population, and only one house, still occupied by the descendants
of Rebecca Nurse.31
Those who have surveyed the wreckage of the Salem witch trials have
mostly spoken of the “broken charity” that marked the event and its devas-
tating effect on the community. To paraphrase one historian, husband had
“broken charity” with wife and wife with husband, mother with child and
child with mother, and neighbor had been pitted against neighbor. Moreover,
as it had been building for years, it took years to disappear.32
One of the first to feel the “broken charity” the Devil, or man, had
wrought in Salem village was the Reverend Samuel Parris. Parris had played
a crucial role in the Salem witch trials. Perhaps he did not deliberately pro-
voke them, nor was he responsible for the factionalism that underscored
them. Given his position of authority and his active involvement in the
trials, however, as well as his having given voice and form to the fears
among his people of “a pattern overwhelming in its scope, a universal drama
in which Christ and Satan, Heaven and Hell, struggled for supremacy,” he
would pay a dear price.33
As early as mid-August 1692, Peter Cloyce, Samuel Nurse and his wife,
and John Tarbell and his wife, in response to Parris’s conduct during the
trials, absented themselves from the Salem village church. Cloyce’s wife
Sarah was in prison, while Rebecca Nurse, Samuel Nurse’s and Mary Tar-
bell’s mother, had been hanged, and they all held Parris responsible. Parris
attempted to persuade them to return, but he failed. Perhaps in response, on
October 23, Parris delivered a sermon for which he chose as his text the
Song of Solomon 1:2: “Oh that you would kiss me with the kisses of your
mouth.” Parris pleaded for an end to the village’s factionalism. “Oh, be
reconciled to me,” he exhorted the congregation, “and give me a kiss of
reconciliation.” “[L]et me sense and feel thy love. … Kisses are very sweet
among friends after some jars and differences, whereby they testify to true
reconciliation.” By virtue of their covenant relation, Parris reasoned, he
could “sue for kisses,” but the dissidents in his midst felt no obligation to
submit.34
In December 1692, church elders complained to the Essex County Court
that the village committee had been negligent in providing for the care of the
church and minister. It explained that as a result of the distractions caused
by the witch trials, there had been no village meetings to relieve their min-
ister. As a result, not only had Parris gone unpaid but the meetinghouse had
fallen into disrepair for want of funds. “By reason of broken windows,
stopped up, some of them by boards or otherwise, and others wide open,”
the elders reported, it was sometimes so cold that it was uncomfortable and
sometimes so dark that it was almost unusable. The anti-Parris village
committee had not merely neglected the Reverend Parris, however; it had
demanded an investigation of what it had all along deemed the fraudulent
conveyance of the parsonage to Parris in 1689.35
On January 15, 1693, the Essex County Court declared the village com-
mittee derelict in its duties and ordered village residents to elect a new one.
On January 17, perhaps in an attempt to make himself appear more humane
and to influence the election, Samuel Parris wrote to Jonathan Corwin that
he was willing to forego six pounds of the salary owed to him for the
previous year, as well as the same amount for the present year. He
explained that he was acting from the realization that some families in the
village had of late suffered some impairment in their estates. His family
too had suffered, he hastened to add, but he was nevertheless moved to
offer the abatement to “gratify” his neighbors and gain whatever “amity”
his action might merit.36
Parris’s magnanimous, if calculated, gesture notwithstanding, on Jan-
uary 25 the village residents elected a new committee that proved to be as
anti-Parris as its predecessor. Soon the church elders brought suit against
the new committee. In March it too was found guilty, and its members
were fined forty shillings each, but the committee still took no action to
raise the funds necessary for Parris and the meetinghouse. Instead, in July
1693, the anti-Parris faction petitioned Governor Phips and the General
Court to appoint outside arbitrators and urged area ministers to press
Parris to call for a council of ministers to resolve the impasse.37
On August 6, in a sermon about the death of Christ, Parris once again
called for reconciliation. As if of himself, he spoke of Jesus as “a dear friend
torn and wounded” with “blood streaming down his face and body.” Even more
affecting than the sight of those wounds, he continued, was the realization that
they were “the vile actors” responsible for those injuries. When the harm is done
by others, he explained, such a sight should affect all hearts not “more flinty
than the rocks.” But “when our consciences tell us that we, our cruel hands,
have made those wounds, and the bloody instruments by which our dearest
friend was gored were of our own forging,” it is even more painful.38 But once
again, Parris’s plea fell upon deaf ears.
In October 1693, John Higginson and Nicholas Noyes, the minister and
assistant minister of the Salem town church, and the Reverend John Hale of
Beverly called on Parris to convene a council of Massachusetts ministers to
arbitrate the dispute. Parris responded by condemning the irregular methods
his opponents were using against him, including their appealing to outsiders.
He recognized that he had little choice but to comply with his brethren’s
request, but he nevertheless managed to postpone the convening of such a
council for over a year.39 In the meantime, he fought back.
In November, Parris drew up a statement of his grievances against the
dissenters. He denounced their “precipitate, schismatical, and total with-
drawing from the church,” as well as “their withdrawing their purses.” He
charged them with having attacked him with a “factious and seditious libel”
and carried their “impetuous pursuit” to the extent of having disturbed him
in his own home late at night. They were guilty, he explained, of “extremely
disturbing the peace of this church and many other good people amongst us,
sadly exposing all to ruin.” Formal charges in hand, in December 1693,
Parris secured a court order forcing village residents to pay his salary or
stand suit, but still none was forthcoming.40
In early March 1694, perhaps successfully appealing to the populace for
an opportunity to end the discord that had plagued the village, a pro-Parris
faction managed to be elected in the majority to the village committee.
Nevertheless, in June, Salem town ministers Higginson and Noyes, this time
joined by Boston ministers James Allen, Samuel Willard, Samuel Cheever,
and Joseph Gerrish, again pressed Samuel Parris to convene a council of
ministers to arbitrate the matter. They were acting, they reported, because
they had been approached by “some persons of Salem village,” but there is
no record of Parris’s response.41
In September, the village committee called a meeting of village residents
to see if they could come “together in peace and unity,” but no record of the
meeting, if it was even held, has survived. Instead, at about the same time
the above-mentioned ministers repeated their call to Parris for a council of
ministers, in that letter adding, “[W]e … find it to be our duty to express
our minds more plainly and particularly, that we may be the more clearly
understood without mistake.”42
Instead of accepting the ministers’ suggestions, Parris opted once again to
deal directly with his opponents. He may have been provided the opportu-
nity to do so when in November 1694 Samuel Nurse and Thomas Wilkins
publicly explained why they were reluctant to attend Parris’s church. Their
antipathy toward Parris had begun, they explained, when the “distractions
and disturbing tumults and noises made by the persons under diabolical
power and delusion” prevented “sometimes our hearing and understanding
and profiting of the word preached.” They feared that they too would be
charged, having heard persons “better than ourselves” accused. Further, they
found Parris’s preaching “dark and dismal,” “offensive,” and often different
from “the generality of the orthodox ministers of the whole country.” Nurse
and Wilkins charged him with being too quick to take the side of the afflic-
ted and therefore bereft of that quality without which his preaching was “as
a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.”43
Parris answered his critics with a sermon on the “late horrid calamity,”
which he called “Meditations for Peace.” It was “a very sore rebuke and
humbling providence” that the witchcraft had come first into his own
family, he began, and that unlawful and diabolical means had been exercised
there to raise spirits and create apparitions, though all was done without his
knowledge. As a result, he continued, “God has been righteously spitting in
my face.”44
Parris owned any errors he might have made in conducting the witchcraft
crisis. He acknowledged that he had given too much weight to spectral evi-
dence, explaining that God might suffer the Devil to take the shape of the
innocent after all, and that it was wrong to ask the afflicted who tormented
another. Parris told the congregation that in that “sore hour of distress and
darkness,” he had “always intended but due justice.” But “through weakness
or sore exercise,” he admitted, he and others equally deluded by the “evil
angels” might have sometimes, “yea possibly sundry times, unadvisedly
expressed” themselves.45
Parris offered his sympathy to those who had suffered “through the clouds
of human weakness and Satan’s wiles and sophistry.” He asked pardon of
God and prayed that all might “be covered with the mantle of love” and
“forgive each other heartily”:
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and evil-speaking be
put away from you, with all malice; and be ye kind to one another,
tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake,
hath forgiven you.46
Forgive one another they might, but not Samuel Parris. His confession might
have been well intended, but it was too little, too late. As John Tarbell,
Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law, commented, “If half so much had been said
formerly, it would never have come to this.” When the dissenters asked for a
copy of “Meditations for Peace” in order “to consider it,” Parris refused,
likely distrusting what use they would make of it.47
On January 18, 1695, the village committee voted a tax for Parris’s salary,
but dissidents persisted in refusing to pay, and local constables refused to
take action against them.48 Parris, perhaps having by that point realized that
an impasse had been reached, agreed to convene the long-sought council of
churches. On April 3 and 4, 1695, seven ministers and ten elders from the
North Shore assembled in Salem village, with Increase Mather serving as the
moderator.
Members of the council listened to both sides and issued their recom-
mendations. The council agreed with the dissidents, that Parris had taken
“unwarranted and uncomfortable steps” during the “dark time of confu-
sion.” But they also recognized that he had been “brought into a better
sense of things,” and that he had acknowledged his errors. Therefore, as he
had otherwise acquitted himself well in the job, the council continued,
“Christian charity might and should receive satisfaction.” Similarly, Parris
and his supporters were to treat the dissenters with “much compassion for
the infirmities discovered … on such a heartbreaking day.” The council
concluded, however, that if it were the case that the rupture between the
dissidents and the Reverend Parris was incurable, and if Parris, “which
God forbid,” should find that he cannot “with any comfort and service,
continue in his present station,” his leaving would not “expose him unto
any hard character” with members of the ministerial council nor, they
hoped, with anyone else.49
The dissidents would not be reconciled, and in late April they sent a petition
to Increase Mather bearing the signatures of some eighty-four residents begging
him and the Boston clergy “to advise Mr. Parris … that he cannot [any longer]
with comfort or profit to himself or others abide in the work of the ministry
among us.” They asked Mather to at least reconvene the council of ministers
and reconsider the evidence. After consulting with his colleagues, on May 6,
Mather wrote to Parris explaining that such opposition made his removal
necessary.50
On May 20, 105 of Parris’s supporters rallied to his cause with a coun-
terpetition, asking that he be retained. They took the position that Parris’s
removal would not reunite the congregation. Three ministers had already
been removed, they reminded the ministers, and with each leaving their dif-
ferences had only grown worse. “Therefore, we justly fear that the removing
of the fourth may rather prove the ruining of their interests of Christ
amongst us, and leave us as sheep without a shepherd.”51
Perhaps at the Boston ministers’ bidding, in late May or early June the
Suffield town church inquired about Parris’s availability to fill their pulpit,
but the Salem village church elders urged Parris not to leave, and “seeing
they would not let me go,” Parris wrote, he agreed to stay. In April 1696,
however, Parris finally consented to move, providing that the congregation
would settle his salary arrears and the matter of his ownership of the
parsonage. Historian Emerson Baker has speculated that Parris agreed to
leave having been worn down by his need to continually defend himself, as
well as family considerations, including his wife’s terminal illness and the
possible death of his niece Abigail Williams. Parris agreed to leave by July
1, but when no settlement was reached by March of the following year and
the anti-Parris faction once again gained control of the village committee,
the committee initiated a lawsuit against him. The committee lost the case,
however, whereupon Parris brought and won a countersuit for a back
salary of 125 pounds.52
The village committee appealed the County Court decision, and both
sides agreed to submit the matter to a panel of arbitrators, which included
Samuel Sewall and Wait Winthrop, both of whom had served on the Court
of Oyer and Terminer, and Elisha Cook, all of Boston. In July 1697, the
panel found that the village should pay Parris seventy-nine pounds, nine
shillings, and six pence, in return for which Parris would relinquish the deed
to the parsonage. That being settled, Parris left for Stowe, Massachusetts,
taking with him his daughter Betty and his son Noyes. Parris’s wife had died in
mid-July 1696. Other than marrying Benjamin Barron in 1710 and moving to
Concord, where she died in 1760, little more is known of Betty’s life after the
trials. Noyes, however, grew to adulthood, only to die insane. And Samuel
Parris succeeded in promptly getting embroiled in another salary dispute in
Stowe, whereupon he left the pulpit and moved to Sudbury, Newton, Water-
town, Concord, and finally Dunstable, variously serving as a schoolmaster,
landlord, merchant, and farmer. He died in 1720 at age 66 or 67.53
Parris’s successor, Joseph Green, was only twenty-two years old when he
arrived in Salem. Green, a Harvard graduate of the class of 1695, had not
seriously, as an undergraduate, considered the ministry. While teaching in
the Roxbury Grammar School and after reading one of Cotton Mather’s
published sermons, he later explained, he became not only a convert but an
evangelist. In this regard, Green may have been somewhat like Parris; unlike
his predecessor, and even his mentor, however, he did not dwell on matters
of damnation. By all reports, Green was demonstrably cheerful, outgoing,
and perhaps most importantly, politically astute when it came to the war-
ring factions of Salem.54
Ordained in 1698, Green soon realized that the true devils of Salem village
were those forces that had caused such animosity among its residents. Two
weeks after his ordination, Green took steps toward reconciliation between
the feuding factions within his flock. In November, he announced to the
congregation that the family of Rebecca Nurse – John Tarbell, Samuel
Nurse, and Thomas Wilkins (Peter and Sarah Cloyce had moved to Marl-
borough, Massachusetts) – wished to rejoin the congregation. They were
unanimously welcomed, but when they returned Green took another bold step.
He reworked the seating plan of his church, intentionally mixing the antago-
nists. He put Samuel Nurse in the same pew with Thomas Putnam; Rebecca
Nurse’s daughter, the Widow Preston, in the pew of the Widow Walcott,
mother of Mary, and so on. The participants accepted the arrangement. If
the residents of Salem village were incapable of extending charity toward
the Reverend Parris, they were able to forgive their neighbors, thereby lifting
the burden that had nearly destroyed their community.55
In 1703, Green asked the congregation to consider revoking the excommu-
nication of Martha Cory, and on February 14 they passed a motion to that
effect, explaining, “We were at that dark day under the power of those errors
which then prevailed in the land; and we are sensible that we had not suffi-
cient grounds to think her guilty of that crime for which she was condemned
and executed; and that her excommunication was not according to the mind
of God.” Six or seven unnamed members dissented from the resolution, and
the church’s motion was blocked in a town meeting so bitter that Green
vowed never to attend town meetings again, but in 1707 the motion was
finally adopted.56
The families of Rebecca Nurse and Giles Cory also had the satisfaction of
having Rebecca’s and Giles’s excommunication revoked on March 6, 1712,
by the First Church of Salem town. In Nurse’s case, the church stated that
although the congregation had voted unanimously to excommunicate her,
she having been convicted of witchcraft by the Court of Oyer and Termi-
ner, the testimony offered against her was no longer “so satisfactory … as
it was generally in that hour of darkness and temptation.” Moreover, it
continued, the General Court had since reversed her attainder. They,
therefore, voted that Nurse’s excommunication be “erased and blotted
out” so that it might “no longer be a reproach to her memory, and an
occasion of grief to her children.”57
Giles Cory, the church records continued, had been excommunicated
because after being “indicted for the sin of witchcraft … he had obstinately
refused to plead, and so threw himself on certain death.” The church,
“having now testimony on his behalf, that, before his death, he did bitterly
repent of his obstinate refusal to plead in defense of his life,” consented to
have his excommunication “erased and blotted out.” Although we will never
know what exactly happened during Cory’s ordeal, there is no evidence to
support the contention that Cory had in the end repented of his refusal to
enter a plea. It may well have been fabricated by the church to justify its
lifting Cory’s excommunication.58
The Repenting Begins

In August 1706, a twenty-nine-year-old woman stood before the Salem village
church while the Reverend Joseph Green read her confession. The woman
sought fellowship with the congregation. Her name was Ann Putnam – the
same Ann Putnam who as a child had named some twenty-one people as wit-
ches. Ann had led a good life since 1692, by all reports. Her mother and father
had died seven years earlier, leaving her to care for her seven younger siblings,
age seven months to sixteen years. At this point, Ann wished to become a full
member of the Salem Village church, but first, she had to confess her sins to the
congregation assembled. Some continued to hold her responsible for the trials
of 1692, but most tended to hold Ann Putnam Sr. responsible for her daughter’s
actions. The Reverend Green helped her compose her confession, and a draft
was reviewed by Rebecca Nurse’s son, Samuel.59
“I desire to be humbled before God,” Green read for Ann Putnam, “for
the sad and humbling providence that befell my father’s family in the year
about ’92.” They were her sentiments, although the minister quite likely
helped her choose the words by which to express them. “It was a great
delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time,” Putnam’s statement
continued. “I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill will.”60
Putnam acknowledged that she had been “an instrument for the accusing
of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby their lives were taken from
them,” but that she now believed them innocent. In particular, she admitted
that she “was a chief instrument of accusing Goodwife Nurse and her two
sisters,” the relatives of whom sat before her, and that she wished “to lie in
the dust and be humbled for it.” She proceeded to “earnestly beg forgiveness
of God” and of “all those unto whom I have given cause of sorrow and
offence, whose relations were taken away and accused.” Although perhaps
some thought Ann had not fully accepted her guilt in the affair, it was as
complete a confession as any could reasonably expect of her, and although
the pain must have been great still in the hearts of many whom Ann had
wronged, they forgave her. Putnam never married, but she stayed in Salem
village her entire life. Much like her mother, Ann Jr. suffered from frequent
ill health. She died at the age of thirty-seven.61
Ann Putnam appears to have been the only one of the accusing girls to
repent. Elizabeth Booth, Sarah Churchill, and Mary Walcott married, as did
Mercy Lewis (after having given birth, it seems), and all save Booth left
Salem village. Abigail Williams and Mary Warren disappeared from the
record, but it is possible, if only speculation, that Abigail was the person to
whom John Hale referred when he commented that among the original
accusers one was “followed with diabolical molestations to her death.”62
Susannah Sheldon moved to Rhode Island and in 1694 the court identified
her as “a person of ill fame.” Mercy Short was excommunicated from the
Boston Church for adultery. But of the rest we know nothing, except for
one line in a subsequent act of the Massachusetts Legislature, which noted
that some of “the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe
prosecutions” have since “discovered themselves to be persons of profligate
and vicious conversations.”63
Others, beyond the accusers, did confess, and their public statements fol-
lowed the Salem witch trials by only a few years. Some were quite dramatic. On
Christmas Eve 1696, for example, the day after the death of his two-year-old
daughter Sarah, Judge Samuel Sewall’s son Sam read from Matthew 12:7: “But
if you had known what this means, ‘I will have mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you
would not have condemned the guiltless.” In this moment of grief, Sewall, who
had prayed with his friend John Alden, stood by the dissident Judge Saltonstall,
and defended the Reverend Samuel Willard, concluded that he had done too
little to save the innocent of 1692, and that he would make a public confession
of his failing.64
Largely through Samuel Willard’s efforts, January 14, 1697, was declared
a day of repentance for “the late tragedy raised among us by Satan and his
instruments.” In the words of Provincial Secretary Isaac Addington, the day
was to be set aside so that:
all God’s people may offer up fervent supplications unto him, that all ini-
quity may be put away, which hath stirred God’s holy jealousy against this
land; that He would show us what we know not, and help us, wherein we
have done amiss, to do so no more.
Provincial leaders hoped that by praying and fasting the actions of those
who had erred would be forgiven, and that God “would remove the rod of
wickedness from off the lot of the righteous.”65
In preparation for the day of repentance, the Massachusetts House and
Council rejected a draft of a proclamation prepared by Cotton Mather and
adopted one authored by the former judge of the Court of Oyer and Ter-
miner, Samuel Sewall. Sewall highlighted the witch trials and sought for-
giveness for “whatever mistakes” had been made, which may have incurred
“the awful judgment of God unleashed on the land.” On January 14th,
Sewall stood before his fellow congregants of Boston’s Old South Church
while the Reverend Samuel Willard read Sewall’s confession. Sewall wrote
of the “strokes of God” he and his family had suffered, as well as of the
guilt he had incurred as the result of his participation on the Court of Oyer
and Terminer. He wished “to take blame and shame” for what he had
done – or failed to do – to ask “pardon of men” and their prayers that God
would pardon his sin and not continue to “visit the sin” on him, his family,
or “the land.” For the rest of his life, Sewall observed annually a private day of
humiliation and prayer to keep fresh in his mind a sense of repentance and
sorrow for the part he bore in the trials. On April 23, 1720, nearly thirty years
after the trials, after reading a recently published account of the affair, he wrote
in his diary: “The good and gracious God be pleased to save New England and
me, and my family.”66
Samuel Sewall was the highest-ranking public official to confess, but he
was not alone. Also on January 14, twelve individuals who had served as
jurors for the Court of Oyer and Terminer offered their plea for forgiveness:
We confess that we ourselves were not capable to understand nor able to

withstand, the mysterious delusion of the power of darkness and prince of
the air, but were, for want of knowledge in ourselves and better informa-
tion from others, persuaded with to take up with such evidence against the
accused as, on further consideration and better information, we justly fear
was insufficient for the touching the lives of any.
They feared they had been “instrumental” along with others in bringing
upon themselves and “this people of the Lord,” though ignorantly and
unwillingly, “the guilt of innocent blood.”
To the survivors of their victims they expressed their deep sense of
sorrow and humbly begged forgiveness:
We do therefore hereby signify to all in general, and to the surviving

sufferers in special, our deep sense of, and sorrow for, our errors in
acting on such evidence to the condemning of any person; and do hereby
declare that we justly fear that we were sadly deluded and mistaken … and
do therefore humbly beg forgiveness, first of God … [and then] of living
sufferers.67
Although admitting their errors, nearly all of the confessions were qualified.
They admitted making mistakes and even causing considerable suffering, but
they insisted their motives had been beyond reproach. They had acted as
they had out of a sense of duty, or ignorance, or weakness. As in the case of
Ann Putnam and the jurors, they insisted that they had had no control over
their actions because they had been deluded – God had permitted the Devil
to use them as instruments to wreak havoc on the province. As Larry Gragg
has pointed out, those confessions “supplied a framework for the colony to
make sense of what happened in 1692.” For years to come, the witchcraft
crisis was seen as “a dark time of delusion, a time when good people were
led astray and shed innocent blood.” It was variously termed: “This delusion
of the Devil”; “the dark and doleful times”; “that hour of darkness and
temptation”; “the hour of sore tribulation and temptation”; and “the dark
time of the confusions.”68
Perhaps the most revealing confession of all came in the form of an
explanation of the entire affair. It came from the pen of the Reverend John
Hale in the same year of Sewall’s confession, 1697, but it was not published
until 1702, two years after his death. Hale’s account appeared under the title
A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft, to which the Reverend
John Higginson of Salem’s First Church added a preface. Higginson found
it an essential and a timely work, and he wrote that he hoped it would
serve as a “warning and caution to those that come after us, that they may
not fall into the like.”69
Hale blamed himself for “unwittingly encouraging … the sufferings of the
innocent.” Beyond that, however, as Larry Gragg put it, “Hale saw no
human villains in this tragedy, only people who made flawed decisions.”
The “justices, judges, and others concerned,” Hale wrote, “displayed a
conscientious endeavor to do the thing that was right.” The judges had
followed accepted legal and theological principles of the day, he explained,
if not entirely correctly, and chief among those was that “the Devil could
not assume the shape of an innocent person in doing mischief unto man-
kind.” Further, that they believed they were right was understandable,
given the number of accusations and confessions.70
Hale had come to question the Court’s reliance on spectral evidence and
to realize that convictions should not be based on such evidence, but instead
arrived at “in the same way that murder, theft, and such crimes are pro-
vable.” He posited four acceptable grounds for conviction: confession; the
testimony of two witnesses that the accused had committed an act unques-
tionably dependent on diabolical assistance; the testimony of partners in the
crime; or “circumstances antecedent to, concomitant with, or suddenly con-
sequent upon such acts of sorcery” that had “like force to fasten a suspicion
of this crime upon this or that person.”71 Such grounds, Hale admitted, were
very difficult to establish, which may have pleased critics of the trials but not its
supporters, who would conclude that if Hale’s recommendations were to be
implemented some of the guilty would almost certainly elude punishment,
along with the innocent. But then, all Hale was really suggesting was that rules
of evidence already employed de facto, if not by law, prior to the Salem witch
trials be reinstated, which would in fact come to pass.
Hale described how the many confessors had stilled doubts, regarding the
veracity of the girls. “You are one that brings this man to death,” he
reported himself as having said to one of the girls who accused George
Burroughs. “If you have charged anything upon him that is not true, recall it
before it be too late, while he is yet alive.” But the confessor did not recant
what she had said, and Burroughs was executed. At the time, Hale found
the verdict against Burroughs just, but he was nonetheless troubled by it. He
could not understand how a man trained in the ministry and in the gospel
could go to his death unconfessed, when given every opportunity to repent.
He did not trust the procedure whereby the Court allowed those who con-
fessed to continue to live as long as they accused others of similar crimes.
He pointed to the fact that nearly all who confessed eventually renounced
their confessions, claiming they had been forced into them, and he allowed
that he was concerned with the dramatic increase in the number of the
afflicted. As the number of the accused grew, so too, contrary to what he
might have expected, did the number of the afflicted, he noted. But when the
accused were released from jail, nothing happened.72
Hale was deeply troubled by all of those inconsistencies, and when he
informed Samuel Sewall about his pending publication in November 1697,
Sewall was troubled as well. Sewall, whose confession was limited to his
own culpability in the trials, feared Hale would “go too far the other way”
and damage the reputation of the judges. Hale did not deny their responsi-
bility, but he wished the judges to be treated fairly. “I am abundantly satis-
fied that those who were most concerned to act and judge in these matters,”
he wrote, “did not willingly depart from the rules of righteousness.” It was
“the darkness of that day, the tortures and lamentations of the afflicted and
the power of former precedents” that misled them, and in the end, “we
walked in clouds, and could not see our way.”73
Finally, Hale, like so many of his fellow Puritan divines, saw the tragedy
of Salem as God’s punishment for a profligate people. Thus, all were guilty
to some extent for what had happened:
The errand of our fathers into this wilderness, was to sacrifice to the
Lord; that is, to worship God in purity of heart and life, and to wait
upon the Lord, walking in the faith and order of the gospel in church
fellowship; that they might enjoy Christ in all his ordinances. But these
things have been greatly neglected and despised by many born, or bred,
upon the land. We have much forgotten what our fathers came in the
wilderness to see. The sealing ordinances of the covenant of grace and
church communion have been much slighted and neglected; and the fury of
the storm raised by Satan hath fallen very heavily upon many that lived
under these neglects. The Lord sent evil angels to awaken and punish our
negligence.74
Only a minority of those responsible for the events of 1692 confessed. The
most prominent among those who did not were the accusing girls, other
than Ann Putnam, and Judge William Stoughton. As acting governor, he
had authorized the day of fasting, but until the end he was convinced that as
presiding judge for both the Court of Oyer and Terminer and the Superior
Court he had done his best to do what seemed just at the time. But even in
not confessing, Stoughton’s retrospective assessment differed little from that
of those who had. Upon hearing of Samuel Sewall’s confession, he is repor-
ted to have responded, as Thomas Hutchinson put it, that “when he sat in
judgment he had the fear of God before his eyes and gave opinion according
to the best of his understanding; and although it may appear afterwards,
that he had been in an error, yet he saw no necessity of a public acknowl-
edgment of it.”75
By and large, Stoughton and the other judges of both courts rose above
the pall cast on the witch-hunt of 1692. All remained members of the Gov-
ernor’s Council after the trials ended, although upon Phips’s death in 1695
English officials passed over Deputy Governor Stoughton to appoint Joseph
Dudley the new royal governor!76
Settling Up
Finally, there was the matter of “settling up,” both legally and monetarily.
Those whose legal records remained tainted and who had suffered con-
siderable financial loss during the Salem witch trials launched an offensive to
expunge the court records and recoup their losses.
The dilemma faced by those convicted, or who had escaped and been
condemned in the process, first surfaced when Elizabeth Procter petitioned
the Massachusetts General Court in 1696. She explained that her husband,
John, had signed a will shortly before his execution that excluded her from
any of his estate, despite a contract he had made in writing with her before
their marriage.77 Rather than slighting her, John Procter likely expected Eliza-
beth to be hanged at some point, and even if she were not, as she had been
condemned, he feared she would not be able to receive his estate. As fate would
have it, Elizabeth was spared execution, but although pardoned she remained
guilty and therefore “dead in the law.” As such, John Procter’s eldest sons, her
stepsons, became his beneficiaries, and Elizabeth was denied her fair share of her
husband’s estate, including her dower to which she would otherwise have been
entitled. Elizabeth Procter petitioned the Legislature to place her, as she put it,
“into a capacity to make use of the law to recover that which of right by law I
ought to have for my necessary supply and support.”78
In 1696, the General Court was not ready to act on Elizabeth Procter’s
motion, but the litany of confessions and the increased number of petitions
on behalf of the condemned no doubt moved the Legislature in that direc-
tion. On June 13, 1700, Abigail Faulkner wrote to the General Court
explaining that her pardon had spared her execution, but that she continued
to live “as a malefactor convict upon record of the most heinous crimes that
mankind can be supposed guilty of.” She asked for “the defacing of the
record” as a simple act of justice. The evidence used against her, she
explained, was limited to the afflicted who “pretended” to see her “by their
spectral sight, and not with their bodily eyes.” Moreover, the jury that had
convicted her, she continued, had since decided that such testimony was of
no value. The House of Representatives voted to grant Faulkner’s request,
but for some undisclosed reason, the Council did not concur.79
In 1702, John Hale, in his A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft,
called “for clearing the good name and reputation of some that have
suffered.”80 On the second day of March of the following year, twenty-one of
the survivors and family members of some of the others from Andover, Salem
village, and Topsfield petitioned the General Court. They too asked the Leg-
islature to remove the “infamy from the names and memory” of those who
had suffered, so that “none of their surviving relations nor their posterity
might suffer on that account.” They were supported by another petition sub-
scribed to by several Essex County ministers.81
The General Court responded. On July 20, 1703, the House of Repre-
sentatives formally forbade some of the procedures that had been employed
in the Salem witch trials. It ordered that spectral evidence no longer “be
accounted valid or sufficient to take away the life or good name of any
person or persons within this province.” It also ruled “that the infamy and
reproach cast on the names and posterity of said accused and condemned
persons may in some measure be rolled away.” This time, the Council con-
curred and added an additional clause, whereby all the condemned persons
were to be acquitted of the penalties to which they were liable upon their
convictions and “estate[d] … in their just credit and reputation, as if no
such judgment had been had.” In effect, some have argued, the General
Court’s ruling reversed the attainders of the condemned, but their convictions
stood. Moreover, the Legislature did nothing for those who had not been
included in the petition.82
On May 25, 1709, seventeen of the condemned or their relatives, in this
instance apparently led by Philip English, demanded that the General Court not
only restore the good names of those who had been condemned, but also
remunerate them for what they had been “damnified in their estates thereby.”83
Other survivors added their petition in the following years, including Isaac
Esty, who claimed that Mary’s estate had been “damnified by reason of such
hellish molestation”; Benjamin Procter, who as John’s eldest son had helped
raise all of his father’s children; the daughters of Elizabeth How; the son of
Sarah Wilds; and all five children of George Burroughs, who opposed as well
the making of any award to their stepmother, who had left them “to shift for
themselves without anything for so much as a remembrance of their father.”
Rallying to their support, urging in a letter addressed to the General Court that
the petition be honored, was none other than Cotton Mather.84
Before proceeding, however, perhaps some further explanation of this
aspect of the petitions may be necessary. As explained earlier in the case of
Giles Cory, in seventeenth-century England penalties for felony convictions
could include forfeiture of goods. Moreover, descendants of the convicted
could be blocked from inheriting property. English law exempted the felony
of witchcraft from the forfeiture penalty, however, and the 1641 Massachu-
setts Body of Liberties went so far as to forbid the forfeiture of property for
convictions of any felony, a situation continued under the new colonial
charter of 1692. The provision of the General Court’s act of December 14,
1692, that provided for forfeiture in witchcraft cases, was disallowed by the
British Privy Council.85
Nevertheless, seizures of property occurred during the Salem witch trials,
and they were presumed to be legal by most governmental authorities. Fol-
lowing the conviction or execution of a family member, several families had
their property confiscated by local sheriffs “in their majesty’s name.” The
families of William Barker, Dorcas Hoar, George Jacobs Sr., Samuel
Wardwell, John Procter, Giles Cory, and Mary Parker either had property
taken or they were threatened with the action. In Salem, Sheriff George
Corwin was responsible for the confiscations, and Robert Calef has recorded
what happened after John and Elizabeth Procter were found guilty:
The sheriff [Corwin] came to his [Procter’s] house and seized all the
goods, provisions, and cattle that he could come at, and sold some
cattle at half price, and killed others, and put them up for the West
Indies; threw out the beer out of a barrel, and carried away the barrel;
emptied a pot of broth, and took away the pot, and left nothing in the
house for the support of the children.86
In 1710, the Procter children valued the loss for the General Court at 150
pounds.87
Upon George Jacob Sr.’s execution, his son George Jr. later reported,
Corwin seized from his estate five cows, eight loads of hay, enough apples to
make twelve barrels of cider, sixty bushels of Indian corn, a mare, two feather
beds, furniture, rugs, blankets, sheets, bolsters, pillows, two brass kettles,
twelve shillings in cash, five swine, “a quantity of pewter,” an “abundance of
small things” (e.g., meat, fowl, chairs), and “a large gold thumb ring,” that
according to Robert Calef was the Widow Jacob’s wedding ring. The entire
loss was valued at just under eighty pounds.88
Finally, there was the case of Mary Parker. Following her execution,
Corwin sent an officer to seize her estate. When her sons John and Joseph
pointed out that she had left none, he seized their cattle, corn, and hay,
pending resolution of the case. The Parkers seem to have actually checked
the law, if only after the fact, because in their later petition to the governor
they wrote, “We know not of any law in force in this province, by which it
should be forfeited upon her [their mother’s] condemnation; much less can
we understand that there is any justice or reason for the sheriff to seize upon
our estate.” Not knowing the law earlier, however, they had not attempted
to block Corwin’s action.89
Among those who had escaped, Elizabeth Cary, Edward and Sarah
Bishop, and Philip and Mary English had their belongings seized, and in
their cases the seizures may have been legal. English law did permit seizures
of the property of those who fled from justice, and so ruled the Massachu-
setts Superior Court in 1694, when Philip English sued Sheriff George
Corwin. Corwin, the Court explained, had followed William Stoughton’s
order, and Stoughton was enforcing the statute penalizing those attempting
to avoid prosecution.90
Nathaniel Cary left some of his personal property with a friend, but the
sheriff seized it as well.91 Following the Bishops’ escape, Essex County
Sheriff George Corwin seized the family’s forty-six sheep, six cows, and an
undetermined number of swine, as well as various household items. When
their son Samuel Bishop paid Corwin ten pounds, the sheriff returned the
household items, but that was all.92 The largest forfeiture, however, was
that of Philip and Mary English. When they fled to New York, Philip
English posted a 4,000-pound security bond in Boston to protect his property.
Sheriff Corwin nevertheless seized English’s property from four warehouses, a
Salem wharf, and his home. English listed as being among his losses several
hundred bushels of grain; an undetermined number of hogsheads of molasses,
sugar, and wine; thousands of boards, staves, and shingles; and several
hundred yards of cloth, all of which he valued at over 1,183 pounds. He
was no doubt further embittered by the death of his wife soon after their
return to Salem, which he attributed to her ordeal of trial, imprisonment,
and flight from almost certain execution.93
Philip English sought revenge on a number of different fronts. In March
1693, he petitioned Governor William Phips for the return of the property
Corwin had seized, insisting that it had been taken illegally. Phips did not
specifically agree that Corwin had acted illegally, but he did order the property
returned. Corwin, however, did not comply. In 1694, English challenged Sheriff
Corwin’s confiscations in court, but lost. The Court, presided over by William
Stoughton, exempted Corwin and his heirs from any liability resulting from his
actions as sheriff. When Corwin died in 1697, however, English seized his body,
holding it until a debt of some sixty pounds, three shillings was paid.94
It should be noted that victims could buy back whatever they could
afford. English refused on principle to take such action, and others did not
do so because they could not afford it. They were of modest circumstances, and
it had taken years for them to accumulate what they had. A few, however, did
avail themselves of the opportunity. After Giles Cory’s death – a manner of
death likely intended by Cory to protect his property – for example, Corwin
told Cory’s sons-in-law John Moulton and William Cleaves that he would seize
Cory’s estate. Cory had willed all of his property to his sons-in-law, but they
believed Corwin was acting within the law, so they paid him eleven pounds, six
shillings to desist, and he did.95
To be fair, the reader should keep in mind that there is little evidence that
Sheriff Corwin profited or sought to profit personally from the seizures. And
as it has already been noted, in the case brought by Philip English against
George Corwin in 1694, the Massachusetts Superior Court ruled that
Corwin had acted under orders from Deputy Governor Stoughton, and within
the law. Nevertheless, it is curious that he does not appear to have seized the
property of all of those convicted within his jurisdiction, and it is not clear why
he selected the families he did. Some were wealthy, to be sure, but most were
relatively poor, with the value of forfeitures later determined to be as little as
two pounds, ten shillings, in the case of William Barker Sr.96
On September 14, 1710, a special committee of the General Court repor-
ted that it had received requests for reversals of attainders from twenty-two
of those condemned in 1692, and petitions for compensation in those and
other cases totaling over 578 pounds. By September 28, 1711, the latter
figure had risen to over 796 pounds, “besides,” as the report reads, “Mr.
English and his demands,” that had been “left to the court’s consideration
and determination.”97
On October 17, the General Court ruled, this time explicitly, that “the
several convictions, judgments, and attainders” of the convicted petitioners
be “reversed, and declared to be null and void.” The Legislature explained
the Province’s behavior by noting that it had been “infested with a horrible
witchcraft or possession of devils,” and referring to “some of the principal
accusers and witnesses in those dark days and severe prosecutions” as
“having since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious
conversation.” The General Court appointed a committee to evaluate the
claims, which included compensation for court costs, jail expenses, travel
costs to attend court sessions, and confiscated property, but it also made it
clear that “no sheriff, constable, jailer or other officer of the law [would] be
liable to any prosecution in the law for anything they then legally did in the
execution of their respective offices.”98
On December 17, 1711, upon the recommendation of the General Court,
Governor Joseph Dudley ordered payment of some 578 pounds, twelve
shillings. Distribution was made through a committee headed by Stephen
Sewall. John and Elizabeth Procter received the most, 150 pounds, while
George Jacobs was given seventy-nine pounds, and George Burroughs fifty
pounds. At the opposite end, Martha Carrier’s survivors were given seven
pounds, six shillings, while Mary Parker received eight pounds. Abigail
Hobbs, who had been a victim, confessor, and accuser, received ten pounds.
The family of Giles and Martha Cory was awarded twenty-one pounds, but the
survivors of Sarah Good received thirty pounds, a sum perhaps made greater by
the harm done to her daughter Dorothy, who still suffered psychologically from
her ordeal.99
Left disgruntled was Philip English, who had demanded nearly 1,200
pounds, but received nothing. The estimate of his losses was probably rea-
sonable, but it seemed excessive to the General Court, especially when the
total amount of money it was prepared to make available to those who made
claims against it totaled only one-half of what English alone demanded. Upon
receipt of another petition from Philip English, the General Court appointed
another committee to consider his claim, and in November 1718, it recom-
mended payment of 200 pounds to him. English refused the payment, so the
matter dragged on.100
English lived out the rest of his years without payment, angry and
increasingly deranged. In 1722, Salem town minister Nicholas Noyes sued
English for having called him a murderer, in reference to his role in the
Salem witch trials. In the meantime, English stopped attending Noyes’s
church and instead exercised his right under the new colonial charter to
contribute to the founding of St. Peter’s Church, the first Anglican house
of worship in Salem.101
On his deathbed, the family would later report, English was asked to
forgive magistrate John Hathorne. English agreed, reluctantly, but quickly
added, “If I get well, I’ll be damned if I forgive him!” Philip English did not
know that two of his granddaughters would marry grandsons of John
Hathorne, and that one of those unions would initiate the lineage of his
great-great-grandson, Nathaniel Hawthorne (he added a w to his name), for
whom the Salem witch trials became a frequent subject of his writing. Upon
Philip English’s death, the colony awarded English’s heirs the 200 pounds.102
On December 8, 1738, nearly half a century after the fact, the issue of
recompense for the Salem witch trials was once more before the Massachusetts
Legislature. On that date, Samuel Sewall, the judge’s son, introduced a bill
whereby a committee would be appointed to secure information relating to
“the circumstances of the persons and families who suffered in the calamity of
the times in and about the year 1692.” The measure was adopted, and Sewall
was charged with chairing the committee, but there is no mention in the
records of its having taken any immediate action.
In an address before both houses of the Legislature on November 22, 1740,
Governor Jonathan Belcher encouraged the committee’s work toward easing
the “sufferings” of those families “ruined in the mistaken management of the
terrible affair called witchcraft,” but once again the record grows silent.
And finally on May 31, 1749, the heirs of George Burroughs petitioned the
Governor and the General Court for “some recompense” for their losses. It
was referred to the committee, but there is no evidence that any further
action was taken.103
Technically, the reversal of attainders of 1711 was imperfect, because, as
historians later discovered, Governor Dudley never actually signed the
reversals, but no one at the time noticed or at least raised any objections.
Moreover, the following individuals were not included in the petition and
thus were not covered by the act: Bridget Bishop, Susannah Martin, Alice
Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Reed, and Margaret Scott.104 In 1946, the
Massachusetts Legislature considered a bill to clear their names, but it failed
to pass, as was the case in 1950, 1953, and 1954. Finally, on August 28, 1957,
the measure was adopted, but only after the original bill was modified to
absolve Massachusetts of any legal obligations to the descendants of the
victims. The Massachusetts General Court concluded that “Ann Pudeator
and certain other persons,” who had been condemned by the Court of Oyer
and Terminer, “may” have been prosecuted illegally and according to a
“shocking law” of the period, and it resolved that their descendants should
be absolved from all resulting “guilt and shame.” Because the act identified
only one of the six individuals by name, some considered it incomplete.
That was corrected on October 31, 2001 – Halloween – by an act signed by
Massachusetts governor Jane Swift.105
The case of Elizabeth Johnson Jr. remained unsettled. Johnson confessed
and was convicted by the Superior Court in January 1693, but as previously
noted, she may well have been of limited mental capacity. Apparently, her
name was left off later reversals of attainder lists, possibly as the result of
confusing her with her mother of the same name. In March 2021, Massa-
chusetts State Senator Diana DiZoglio introduced a bill to amend the 1957
legislation by adding Johnson’s name. The governor signed the measure on
July 28, 2022. Johnson is believed to be the last of the accused to be
exonerated.106
Notes
bridge University Press, 2014), 809–811.
5 Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA: Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II:
488; Cotton Mather, “Wonders of the Invisible World,” in George Lincoln
Burr, ed., Narratives of the New England Witchcraft Cases (New York:
8 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 238; Larry Gragg, The Salem Witch
Crisis (New York: Praeger, 1992), 192.
10 Cotton Mather, Selected Letters of Cotton Mather, ed. Kenneth Silverman
(Baton Rouge, LA: University of Louisiana Press, 1971), 45.
11 Increase Mather, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men
(Boston, MA: Benjamin Harris, 1693), postscript.
13 Cotton Mather, “A Brand Plucked Out of the Burning” (1693), in George Lin-
coln Burr, ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 259–260; David Harley, “Explaining Salem:
Calvinist Psychology and the Diagnosis of Possession,” The American Histor-
ical Review, 101 (April 1996): 323.
14 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 241; Harley, “Explaining Salem,” 323.
16 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 242; Cotton Mather, The Diary of
Cotton Mather (reprint, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), I: 171–172.
17 Mather, The Diary, I: 171–172; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 242–243.
20 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 243–244; Mather, “A Brand Plucked
Out,” 259–287.
Burr, ed. Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases: 1648–1706 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1914), 299, 325; Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of
Cotton Mather (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 130; Starkey, The Devil in
Massachusetts, 245.
24 Mather, Selected Letters, 50–51; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 245–246.
25 Samuel Eliot Morison, The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1970), 259.
26 Calef, More Wonders, 293.
27 Silverman, The Life and Times, 87–88; Mather, Selected Letters, 44.
28 Cotton Mather, The Diary of Cotton Mather, ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford
(New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), I: 216.
29 Mather, Diary, I: 216.
30 Emerson Bakes estimates that an additional sixteen individuals were implicated
in some way but not charged: See: Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft:
The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2015), 126. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 381, 465–466.
Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 177.
34 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 195; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 176.
36 Quoted in Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 201.
37 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 69–71; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft,
230–231; Larry Gragg, A Quest for Security: The Life of Samuel Parris, 1653–
1720 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 153–162.
40 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 71–72; Mather, Selected Letters, 250.
43 Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds., Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Doc-
Boston University Press, 1993), 296–297; “Summary of Grievances Against
Samuel Parris,” in Richard Godbeer, The Salem Witch-Hunt: A Brief History
with Documents (New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2011), 171–172. Starkey,
The Devil in Massachusetts, 252.
44 “Samuel Parris’s Meditations for Peace,” in Godbeer, The Salem Witch-Hunt,
168–171; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 251.
45 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 297–299; “Samuel Par-
ris’s Meditations for Peace,” in Godbeer, The Salem Witch-Hunt, 168–171.
46 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 297–299; “Samuel Par-
ris’s Meditations for Peace,” in Godbeer, The Salem Witch-Hunt, 168–171.
47 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 295; Gragg, Quest for
Security, 166–168; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 251; Boyer and Nis-
senbaum, Salem Possessed, 74.
50 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 260–262, 308.
51 Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., Salem Village Witchcraft, 262–263. Boyer and
Nissenbaum have studied both petitions and found that supporters of the
Salem witch trials generally continued to support Parris in 1695, while opponents
were overwhelmingly against him. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 76,
185.
52 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 74–78; Gragg, Quest for Security,
164–168, Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 232.
53 Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 77–78; Gragg, Quest for Security,
168–170, 177–185; Marilyn K. Roach, “That Children, Betty Parris,” Essay
Institute Historical Collections, 124 (January 1988), 20–27; Baker, A Storm of
Witchcraft, 233.
54 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 253; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Pos-
sessed, 218.
55 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 506–507; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Pos-
sessed, 217–221; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 254–255. See also: Baker,
A Storm of Witchcraft, 234.
57 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 191; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 483.
59 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 258; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 234–235.
Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan: The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
(New York: Doubleday, 1995), 215; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 234–235.
On Ann’s apology, see Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch
Trials of 1692 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 36–38, 40–41;
and Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York: George Braziller,
1969), 215.
62 Hill, A Delusion of Satan, 214–215.
63 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 465; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 234.
64 Samuel Sewall, Samuel Sewall’s Diary, ed. Mark Van Doren (reprint, New
York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 137–138; Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s
Apology: The Salem witch Trials and the Forming of a conscience (London:
Fourth Estate, 2005), 178.
65 Eve Plant, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 201–203; Samuel Sewall, The Diary of
Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1973), I: 366–67, 403, 450–451; Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s
Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience
(New York: HarperCollins 2005), 176–177. Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 473–
474; Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft, 222.
66 Francis, Judge Sewall’s Apology, 181–182; Sewall, Diary, 140; Upham, Salem
Witchcraft, II: 442. See also: Eve LaPlante, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and
Repentance of Samuel Sewall (New York: HarperOne, 2007).
69 John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), in Burr,
ed., Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 401–402; Starkey, The Devil in Mas-
sachusetts, 264.
70 Hale, A Modest Inquiry, 415, 421; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 200.
71 John Hale, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702, reprint,
Bainbridge, NY: York Mail-Print, 1973), 162–164.
72 Hale, A Modest Inquiry, 412, 423–424; Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts,
264–265.
73 Sewall, Diary, 146; Hale, A Modest Inquiry, 427.
75 Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachu-
setts Bay (1764), ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1936), II: 46.
76 Starkey, The Devil in Massachusetts, 263; Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion, 222.
82 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 477; Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 852.
84 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 854–855, 902–903, 856–858, 634; Gragg, The
Salem Witch Crisis, 190; Baker A Storm of Witchcraft, 248–249.
85 David C. Brown, “The Forfeitures at Salem, 1692,” William and Mary Quar-
terly, 50 (January 1993), 3rd series, 85–111; see also: David C. Brown, “The
Case of Giles Corey,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 121 (October
1985): 284, 289–290, 293, 295, 297.
86 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 129; Boyer and Nissenbaum, eds., The Salem
Witchcraft Papers, III, 997–998; Calef, More Wonders, 361.
87 David T. Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County,
1629–1692 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 174;
88 Calef, More Wonders, 364; Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 383.
90 Bryan F. Le Beau, “Philip English and the Witchcraft Hysteria,” Historical
Journal of Massachusetts, 15 (January 1987): 6.
92 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 856; Calef, More Wonders, 370.
93 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 966–869; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 6.
94 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 219–220; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 6, 17 note 35.
95 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 865; Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 129–130.
100 Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, 916–917; Le Beau, “Philip English,” 7–8.
102 Le Beau, “Philip English,” 8, 10.
104 Gragg, The Salem Witch Crisis, 190. Not surprisingly, no one ever petitioned
for Tituba, either. Elaine G. Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem: Dev-
ilish Indians and Puritan Fantasies (New York: New York University Press,
1996), 177.
105 George Malcom Yool, 1692 Witch Hunt (Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, 1992),
144; Rosenthal, Salem Story, 219; Marilynne K. Roach, The Salem Witch
Trials: A Day-by-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege (New York:
Cooper Square Press, 2002), 588.
106 For a detailed account of the exoneration of Elizabeth Johnson, Jr., see www.
cnn.com/2022/08/06/us/salem-witch-trials-exonerated-elizabeth-johnson-cec/
index.html
Epilogue
The Salem witch trials came near the end of a tragic era. The number of
witch trials had begun to decline precipitously throughout the West, until by
the mid-eighteenth century they practically disappeared. In the Netherlands, the
decline actually began earlier in the century; in Poland, it did not occur until
after 1725. The last legal execution in Europe occurred in Glarus, Switzerland,
in 1782, but in 1793, two women were condemned at an unauthorized hearing
and put to death for using witchcraft to harm their neighbor’s cattle in the
Polish town of Poznan. Such extra-legal and vigilante actions were not
uncommon in Europe, after recourse to the law was blocked for those who
were convinced that others were witches and doing them harm.1
Large hunts disappeared first, perhaps because of the social dysfunction they
had caused, then individual cases, especially after the laws were changed,
making conviction more difficult, if not impossible. There were no large hunts
in England after the mid-seventeenth century, and one of the last cases in Eng-
land for which we have any information occurred in Tring, Hertfordshire. In
1751, a poor, elderly couple, Ruth and John Osborne, living in a workhouse
and dependent on the community for their living, were seized on suspicion of
witchcraft. Both were acquitted, but they were seized by a mob and subjected
to the water, or swimming, test, wherein Ruth drowned. The ringleader of the
mob was executed for her murder.2
The decline in the number of witch trials was as rapid in New England.
In 1693, after attempting suicide, Mary Watkins of Massachusetts accused
herself of being a witch, but the jury would not even indict her, finding her
instead unfit to stand trial. And in 1697, the Winifred Benhams, mother and
daughter, of Connecticut, appeared in court on charges of witchcraft but
were acquitted. Thereafter, witch trial records vanish.3 The people of New
England had come to realize that it was beyond their ability to find witches
and to convict them in a court of law, but they did not cease so quickly to
believe in their existence.
In 1720, in Littleton, Massachusetts, in a case that paralleled Salem in its
early stages, eleven-year-old Elizabeth Blanchard fell into fits, experienced
trances and visions, physically attacked herself and others, and complained
of “wounds and pinches and prickings, which she said she had received by
DOI: 10.4324/9781003120636-12
256 Epilogue
invisible hands.” Soon, her two younger sisters were stricken and all three
accused a local woman of afflicting them. The community was divided over
the diagnoses, variously believing that the girls were “under-witted,” wicked,
or “under an evil hand.” As a “general cry” to take action against the accused
intensified, the woman died, whereupon the children returned to normal, lead-
ing most to believe the case had been solved. Years later, however, Elizabeth
Blanchard, then a grown woman, confessed to her pastor that out of “folly and
pride” she and her sisters had concocted the whole affair.4
In 1746, charges of occult practices circulated once again in Salem village.
The Reverend Peter Clark reported that he had received information that
several people in his parish had “resorted to a woman of very ill reputation,
pretending to the art of divination and fortune-telling.” Clark’s congrega-
tion, whose predecessors had been so quick to bring suit only half a century
earlier, merely issued a statement condemning such practices. The statement
read that it was “highly impious and scandalous … for Christians, especially
church members, to seek and consult reputed witches or fortune-tellers.”
The congregation did not recommend any legal action, agreeing instead that
such practice rendered “the persons guilty of it subject to the just censure of
the church.” Similarly, the Reverend Clark admonished everyone against the
“infamous and ungodly practice of consulting witches or fortune-tellers, or
any that are reputed such,” and he exhorted those guilty of such actions “to
repent and return to God, earnestly seeking forgiveness.”5
Writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, one clergyman observed
that few towns in New England had failed to experience at least one suspi-
cion of witchcraft, and that some inhabitants “were well-versed in that
occupation.” In 1800, another minister on a missionary tour of eastern
Maine found that in the town of Fayette there was “witchcraft in plenty,”
including inexplicable physical and mental tortures of one man and myster-
ious interferences with the production of cheese from milk in the house of
the town minister. From 1800 to 1810, a young girl in Bristol, Connecticut,
charged her aunt with bewitching her, an accusation that occurred in the
midst of a number of mysterious events, while some seventy years later two
women of Hopkinton, New Hampshire, were suspected of witchcraft. In
this last instance, when asked by the townspeople how they might proceed, the
Reverend Timothy Walker of nearby Concord told them that “the most they
had to fear from witches was from talking about them; that if they would
cease talking about them and let them alone they would soon disappear.”6
Times had changed.
Belief in the supernatural continued, even in intellectual circles, into the
eighteenth century. It coexisted with ideas of Lockean psychology and
Newtonian science, and the English jurist William Blackstone continued to
insist that “to deny the possibility, nay, the actual existence, of witchcraft
and sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God …
[and] a truth to which every nation in the world hath … borne testimony.”7
By the middle of the century, however, the degree of skepticism concerning
Epilogue 257
the practice of witchcraft brought about an end to belief among the better-
educated. Exemplified by the Scientific Revolution, people no longer saw the
operation of the universe as quite so mysterious, but rather knowable,
orderly, and functioning according to fixed laws beyond the influence of
men. The resulting mechanical philosophy denied the existence of occult
powers, insisting instead that there were natural explanations for apparently
supernatural phenomena.8 As Richard Godbeer has explained:
As the realm of natural causation encroached onto territory formerly

designated as supernatural, commentators began to explain seemingly
occult phenomena in rationalist terms; [and] a growing number of
educated people became less willing to categorize particular incidents as
supernatural.9
Those individuals – the educated, in positions of authority – took the steps

necessary, largely revising the law, to stop the prosecutions. In Europe they
adopted stricter rules concerning the use of torture, and in England and New
England they insisted on more conclusive proof of diabolical pact than spectral
evidence. If the masses of people continued to accuse their neighbors of witch-
craft, as indeed they did, they were forced to seek regress through extra-legal, if
not illegal, means, including white magic and vigilantism.10
Belief in the supernatural among the more common folk did not disappear
as quickly. As they had for centuries, people continued to view the world as
a place filled with occult forces that could be harnessed for good or evil
purposes. For them, the decline in what the better-educated now called a
superstition constituted a gradual shift in belief rather than a sudden trans-
formation, and that lasted for a goodly portion of the population, well into
the nineteenth century.11
By the nineteenth century, even the masses of people were better educated
about the workings of the universe. Further, at least for some, economic
conditions had improved, ameliorating the dislocations brought about by the
first stages of modernization. A more tolerant religious climate had evolved,
wherein although wars continued to be fought they were more often launched
for nationalistic rather than religious reasons. As one historian has concluded:
In such an environment individuals and communities have less reason to

lash out at their helpless neighbors to relieve their general fears, and
even less reason to engage in a massive witch-hunt to eradicate an
imaginary horde of Devil-worshippers who were threatening to turn the
entire world and the social order upside down.12
Until the end, those suspected of being witches continued to be women of at

least middle age, and incidents of conflict and discordant personalities con-
stituted the most common cause of suspicion. The image of the witch,
however, was transferred to that of victim and hag. In his investigation of
258 Epilogue
incidents involving witches in the nineteenth century, John Demos has found
several references to witches as victims: In Exeter, Rhode Island, a cat
scampered across the road in front of a farmer, startling his horse team. The
farmer, suspecting that a local woman had assumed the cat’s shape, shot the
cat with a silver bullet (believed most effective in such matters), and else-
where the suspected witch simultaneously fell and broke her hip. A resident
of Salem, New Hampshire, attributing his cow’s illness to sorcery, cut off its
ears and tail, whereupon a suspected witch soon died in a house fire. And a
woman of Wentworth, New Hampshire, frustrated in her efforts to churn a
store of butter, thrust a hot poker into the churn, at which point the butter
came but only after a loud scream was heard in the distance and a long-
suspected neighbor suffered a bad burn on her legs!13
Demos found that whereas descriptions of seventeenth-century witches
portrayed a powerful, formidable, and dangerous adversary, by the nine-
teenth century she had become a “hag-witch,” characteristically old and
decrepit. As portrayed in the literature of the time, she was ugly, often dis-
organized, confused, and a trifle “dotty,” to use Demos’s word. She was an
isolate, lived alone, and enjoyed no human contact. Representative is the
poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s description of Moll Pitcher, a well-known
witch of eighteenth-century Lynn, Massachusetts:
She stood upon a bare, tall crag which overlooked her rugged cot –
A wasted, gray, and meager hag,
In features evil as her lot.
She had the crooked nose of a witch,
And a crooked back and chin;
And in her gait she had a hitch,
And in her hand she carried a switch,
To aid her work of sin. 14
The once-powerful witch might still have inspired some fear, but to many
she had become a target for contempt, ridicule, and mockery. And the image
stuck, as witnessed through figures in popular culture, such as the Wicked
Witch of the West in the film The Wizard of Oz (1939). To others, however,
witches regained the status they held in antiquity of being potential sources
of good and were even romanticized, as seen in the Good Witch of the
North in The Wizard of Oz and, most recently, in the wildly popular Brit-
ish-imported Harry Potter novels and films.
In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in the practice of
witchcraft, better known as Wicca. But although misunderstood and even
viewed with concern in some quarters, this latter-day neopagan form of
nature worship coexists peacefully with its dominantly Christian neighbors.
At long last, we can proclaim that we no longer believe in witches. That is
to say, our belief in witches as it developed in the West, beginning in the
fifteenth century, as so threatening to church and state that they should not
Epilogue 259
be suffered to live, is dead. But perhaps not all forms of “the great fear”
have passed.
In his book on Samuel Sewall’s apology, Richard Francis argues that the
Salem witch trials “represented a last-ditch attempt to continue to see the
world as a simple allegorical struggle between the forces of good and evil,
God and Satan, in favor of a more relativistic and psychological way … of
accounting for the drama of human life.” Similarly, Andrew Delbanco, in
his provocatively titled The Death of Satan, points to the Salem witch
trials as the turning point, not only in the belief in witches but in the
influence of the Devil. After centuries of cultural development of his dia-
bolical persona, Delbanco writes, in a few short years the Devil became
like an old actor whose declaratory story style had become comic and who
was losing his audience.15 But such conclusions may be somewhat premature
for many Americans.
In 2008, 62 percent of Americans continued to believe in the Devil, which is
within the range of such belief over the past half-century of 55 to 65 percent.
These same polls provide two definitions to which one or the other most
American subscribe. The Devil, they suggest, is either “a personal being who
directs evil forces and influences people to do wrong” or “an impersonal force
that influences people to do wrong.” And, perhaps most strikingly, level of
education is not as mitigating a factor as some might believe, in that a majority
of Americans believe in the Devil, regardless of level of education – 55 percent
of those with postgraduate degrees, for example.16
This continued high level of belief in the Devil should be coupled with
Americans’ similarly continued, if periodic, alarm at the Devil’s activity in
the world, often with the assistance of those we no longer call witches,
necessarily, but more often Satanists.17 The reader need only hearken back
to the 1970s and 1980s for the last major Satanist scare in America, when
Satanist-related literature, news reports, and radio and television programs
dominated the media. The Time magazine cover story for June 19, 1972,
may have raised the alarm with its title “The Occult Revival,” subtitled
“Satan Returns,” and its picture of a hooded head supposedly of a Satanist.
But it continued into the 1980s through such popular television programs
as that of Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue, perhaps peaking with Ger-
aldo Rivera’s two-hour special, Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Secret
Underground, which topped the Nielson talk show ratings in 1988.18 That
scare came to an end only after several extensive and widespread investigations
failed to find any real evidence to support anti-Satanist claims that what
appeared to be signs of ritualistic abuse were linked to any organized satanic
conspiracy.
It is as difficult to plumb the remaining depths of our fears of the
unknown as it is to guard against our inappropriate or disproportionate and
often tragic response to it. But therein lies one explanation for our continued
fascination with the Salem witch trials, now over 300 years old. As Bernard
Rosenthal has recently put it, the Salem witch trials have become “the
260 Epilogue
vehicle for countless metaphors of oppression and persecution.” For that
reason alone, he argues, that which by any other standard would be rela-
tively minor in its magnitude has achieved archetypal status.19
Symbolic of this status is that in 1991, when a monument was unveiled in
Salem to the victims of the witch trials, Arthur Miller was the guest of
honor, and when, the following year, the monument was dedicated, Elie
Wiesel officiated. Miller’s presence – as author of The Crucible (1952), set in
Salem in 1692 but written in the midst of the anti-communist “witch-hunt”
of the 1950s – was not only appropriate but it also made clear that what had
been erected in Salem would not only mark a historical event but also serve
as “the validation of truth over superstition and bigotry.” And for his life-
long testimonial to the destruction of European Jewry during World War II,
for which he earned the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986, Wiesel’s presence
reflected the continued association of the Salem witch trials with persecution
and suffering.20
The Salem witch trials remind us of a barbaric period in American history
long past, that might be easily forgotten or at least dismissed except for its
entertainment value. We do not hang witches, anymore, after all. We
nevertheless continue to remember, because we persist in harboring fears
that not only could it happen again, but that it has, repeatedly, if in different
forms. That is to say, we still tend to single out innocent victims, or scape-
goats, in order to put a human face on our otherwise nebulous and uni-
dentifiable enemies. As historian Gretchen Adams has written, the Salem
witch trials have become “a metaphor that has surfaced in many cultural
controversies from the end of the trials to the present day; a metaphor
whose meanings ranged from governmental tyranny to superstition and
ignorance, blind obedience to religious authority, the threat of disorder and
violence by the public to persecution. These days, it is simply invoked as a
‘witch-hunt’”21
Charles Upham, in his nineteenth-century study of the Salem witch trials,
was among the first to raise such a specter. He pointed to the colony of New
York, where in 1741 a “witch-hunt” occurred in response to a rumor that
had been spread of “a conspiracy … among the colored portions of the
inhabitants to murder whites.” The result, he pointed out, much like in
Salem, was a “universal panic, like a conflagration,” resulting in the
imprisonment of over a hundred people, the hanging of twenty-two, the
burning at the stake of eleven, and the transporting into slavery of another
fifty – nearly all black. The moral, he concluded, reflecting on what he had
just found in the Salem witch trials, was “that any people given over to the
power of contagious passion, may be swept by desolation, and plunged
into ruin.”22
Perhaps the best-known use of the Salem metaphor has been in the history
of the anti-communist purges of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Arthur
Miller made sure that would be the case when in his introduction to his
dramatization of the Salem witch trials, written at the peak of the anti-
Epilogue 261
communist witch-hunt, he explained that the play was not a history “in the
sense in which the word is used by the academic historian.” Rather, it was
intended to present “the essential nature of one of the strangest and most
awful chapters in human history,” the application of which, though quite
clear by implication, he left to his audience’s imagination.23
In October 1996, Miller offered a more direct explanation of why he
wrote The Crucible. He made clear that the forces of anti-communism
were very much on his mind. As to those who would dismiss the rele-
vance of the two incidents – over 250 years apart – he wrote that
Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “power to stir fears of creeping Communism
was not entirely based on illusion … the paranoid, real or pretended
always secretes its pearl around a grain of fact.” To the people of
seventeenth-century Massachusetts and Cold War America, witches and
communists were real; their existence was never questioned – even by the
“loftiest” of minds. The majority succumbed to the “outbreak of paranoia”
that drove both events – that “blind panic,” which rather than being unique
to those historical moments, continues in our age “to sit at the dim edges of
consciousness.”24
The number of alleged witch-hunts in American history is far larger,
however, including groups long forgotten, except by academic historians,
and others added from our more recent past: the Illuminati, Masons,
Roman Catholics, Jews, Japanese Americans, anarchists, atheists, feminists,
homosexuals, and Muslims, to name just a few. That they were the source
of considerable public and/or governmental harassment is clear. Whether or
not the reaction to them constituted a witch-hunt, or even deserves to be
mentioned in the same breath as the Salem witch trials is beyond the scope
of this book and left to the reader’s further investigation. The fear that they
do, however, continues to haunt us. Over a century ago Charles Upham
wrote:
In its general outlines and minuter details, Salem witchcraft is an illus-

tration of the fatal effects of allowing the imagination influenced by
passion to take the place of common sense, and of pushing the curiosity
and credence of the human mind in this stage of our being, while in
these corporeal embodiments, beyond the boundaries that ought to limit
their exercise.25
More recently, Peter Charles Hoffer concluded:
Can it happen again, in our time? The sad answer is yes, for it hap-
pened over and over after Salem. … The fact is that here and now, in
our enlightened time, when the folk beliefs and superstitions of the
seventeenth century seem so far away, we entertain superstitions suited
to our own fears. … Such fears are in one sense inevitable. They are
part of the frailty of human nature.26
262 Epilogue
Notes
1 Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, fourth edition (New
York: Routledge, 2016), 254–256.
2 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 263; Charles Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, MA:
Wiggin and Lunt, 1867), II: 517.
4 John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New Eng-
land (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 389.
10 Levack, The Witch-Hunt, 237–240; Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of
the Witch Hunts (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985), 160.
12 Klaits, Servants of Satan, 246–250.
13 Demos, Entertaining Satan, 290, 388.
15 Richard Francis, Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the
Forming of an American Conscience (London: Fourth Estate, 2005), xiv;
Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan (New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Giroux, 1995).
16 Bernard Rosenthal, Salem Story: Reading the Witch Trials of 1692 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 209; George H. Gallup Jr., Religion in
America 1996 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Religion Research Center, 1996), 20;
Steven Waldman, “Who Believes in the Devil?” www.beliefnet.com/story/121/story_
12197.html. A more recent study found the range of belief in the Devil as 55% in
1990 to 70% in 2004, the latter possibly reflecting a post-9/11 effect. Joseph Baker,
“Who Believes in Religious Evil? An Investigation of Sociological Patterns of Belief
in Satan, Hell, and Demons, Review of Religious Research, 50 (December 2008):
206. These findings might be compared to figures released in a 1988 Gallup Poll,
wherein it was reported that 30 percent or less of the people living in France, Great
Britain, Italy, Norway, or Sweden believed in the Devil. For a brief discussion of
this, see John Updike, “Elusive Evil: An Idea Whose Time Keeps Coming,” The
New Yorker, July 22, 1966, 62–70.
17 William W. Zellner, Countercultures: A Sociological Analysis (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1994), 77.
18 Zellner, Countercultures, 78.
20 Rosenthal, Salem Story, 208. For more on Salem’s efforts to balance tourism with
recognition of the persecution of the accused of 1692, see Emerson W. Baker, A
Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2015), Ch. 9, especially pages 271–286.
21 Gretchen A. Adams, “Mysteries, Memories and Metaphors: The Salem Witch-
craft Trials in the American Imagination,” Proceedings of the American Anti-
quarian Society, 110 (Part 2, 2000): 258.
22 Upham, Salem Witchcraft, II: 437–438. Other studies set the numbers at 13
burned at the stake, 20 hanged (including 16 slaves and 4 whites), and 77 ban-
ished (70 slaves and 7 whites). See John M. Murrin, “Coming to Terms with the
Salem Witch trials,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 110 (Part
2, 2000): 312.
Epilogue 263
23 Arthur Miller, The Crucible (1952; reprint, New York: Bantam Books, 1959), xvii.
24 Arthur Miller, “[From] Why I Wrote The Crucible,” in Francis Hill, ed., The
Salem Witch Trials Reader (Cambridge, MT: Da Capo Press, 2000), 383–390.
26 Peter Charles Hoffer, The Salem Witchcraft Trials: A Legal History (Lawrence,
KS: University Press of Kansas, 1997), 145–146.
Appendix
The list includes only persons against whom legal actions were initiated
during the Salem prosecutions of 1692. Many others were accused
informally.1
For those of the accused not given a separate case entry in The Salem
Witchcraft Papers, the page citation for the complaint, warrant, or other
reference to the accused is given after the defendant’s name in parentheses.
All towns and villages cited were in Massachusetts unless stated otherwise.
In the right column, an asterisk represents a confession, and “E” represents
“executed.” In addition to the 19 executions, Giles Corey was pressed to
death during interrogation. Lydia Dustin, Ann Foster, Sarah Osborne, and
Roger Toothaker died in prison.
Name Town or Village Verdict of Special Court

(if any)
Arthur Abbot (I, 183) ?

Nehemiah Abbot, Jr. Topsfield released2
John Alden Boston escaped
Daniel Andrew (II, 493) Salem Village escaped
Abigail Barker Andover *3
Mary Barker Andover *
William Barker, Sr. Andover *
William Barker, Jr. Andover *
Sarah Bassett Lynn
Sarah Bibber Wenham
Bridget Bishop Salem Village convicted E4
Edward Bishop, Jr. (III, Salem Village escaped
805)
Sarah Bishop Salem Village escaped
Mary Black Salem Village
Appendix 265

(if any)
Mary Bradbury Salisbury convicted5

Mary Bridges, Sr. Andover *
Mary Bridges, Jr. Andover *
Sarah Bridges Andover *
Hannah Bromage Andover
Sarah Buckley Salem Village
George Burroughs Wells, Maine convicted E
Candy (slave) Salem Town *
Andrew Carrier (I, 197) Andover *
Martha Carrier Andover convicted E
Richard Carrier Andover *
Sarah Carrier Andover *
Thomas Carrier, Jr. Andover *
Hannah Carroll (I, 235) Salem Town
Bethia Carter, Sr. Woburn
Bethia Carter, Jr. Woburn
(III, 729)
Elizabeth Cary Salem Town escaped
Sarah Churchill Charlestown
Mary Clarke Haverhill
Rachel Clenton Ipswich
Sarah Cloyse Salem Village
Sarah Cole Lynn
Sarah Cole Salem Town
Elizabeth Colson Reading escaped?
Mary Colson (II, 539) ?
Giles Corey Salem Village
Martha Corey Salem Village convicted E
Deliverance Dane Andover *
Sarah Davis (III, 956) Wenham
Day (f) (III, 880–881) ?
Mary DeRich Salem Village
Elizabeth Dicer (II, 651) Piscataqua, Maine
Rebecca Dike (I, 305) Gloucester
Ann Dolliver Gloucester
266 Appendix

(if any)
Mehitabel Downing (III, ?

880–881)
Joseph Draper (II, 335) Andover *
Lydia Dustin Reading
Sarah Dustin Reading
Rebecca Eames Andover convicted *6
Mary Easty Salem Village convicted E
Esther Elwell Gloucester
Martha Emerson Haverhill *
Joseph Emons Manchester
Mary English (III, 805) Salem Town escaped
Philip English Salem Town escaped
Thomas Farrer Lynn
Edward Farrington Andover
Abigail Faulkner, Sr. Andover convicted7
Abigail Faulkner, Jr. Andover *
(II, 335)
Dorothy Faulkner Andover *
John Flood (I, 183) Rowley
Elizabeth Fosdick Malden
Ann Foster Andover convicted *c
Nicholas Frost Manchester
Eunice Frye Andover
Dorcas Good Salem Village
Sarah Good Salem Village convicted E
Mary Green Haverhill
Thomas Hardy (II, 565) Piscataqua, Maine
Elizabeth Hart Lynn
Rachel Hatfield (III, ?
880–881)
Margaret Hawks Salem Town
Sarah Hawkes Andover *
Dorcas Hoar Beverly convicted*c
Abigail Hobbs Topsfield convicted8
Deliverance Hobbs Topsfield *
William Hobbs Topsfield
Elizabeth How Topsfield convicted E
Appendix 267

(if any)
John Howard (II, 465) Rowley

Elizabeth Hubbard Salem Village
Francis Hutchens Haverhill
Mary Ireson Lynn
John Jackson, Sr. Rowley
John Jackson, Jr. Rowley *
George Jacobs, Sr. Salem Town convicted E
George Jacobs, Jr. Salem Village escaped
Margaret Jacobs Salem Town *
Rebecca Jacobs Salem Village
Abigail Johnson (II, 499) Andover
Elizabeth Johnson, Sr. ? *
Elizabeth Johnson, Jr. ? */
Rebecca Johnson Andover
Stephen Johnson Andover *
Mary Lacey, Sr. Andover convicted *c
Mary Lacey, Jr. Andover *
John Lee ?
Mercy Lewis Salem Village
Jane Lilly Malden
Mary Marston Andover *
Susannah Martin Amesbury convicted E
Sarah Morey Beverly
Rebecca Nurse Salem Village convicted E
Sarah Osborne Salem Village
Mary Osgood Andover *
Elizabeth Paine (II, 339) Charlestown
Alice Parker Salem Town convicted E
Mary Parker Andover convicted E
Sarah Parker (III, 1021) Andover
Sarah Pease Salem Town
Joan Penny Gloucester
Hannah Post Rowley *
9
Mary Post Rowley
Susannah Post Andover *
Margaret Prince Gloucester
268 Appendix

(if any)
Benjamin Proctor Salem Village

Elizabeth Proctor Salem Village convictedd
John Proctor Salem Village convicted E
Sarah Proctor Salem Village
William Proctor Salem Village *
Ann Pudeator Salem Town convicted E
Wilmot Reed Marblehead convicted E
Sarah Rice Reading
Abigail Roc (I, 305) Gloucester
Susannah Roots Beverly
Henry Salter Andover
John Sawdy Andover
Margaret Scott ? convicted E
Ann Sears Woburn
Susannah Sheldon ?
Abigail Somes Salem Town
Martha Sparks Chelmsford
Mary Taylor Reading
Tituba (slave) Salem Village *
Job Tookey Beverly
Jerson Toothaker Billerica
Mary Toothaker ? *
Toothaker (f) (I, 183) ?
(daughter of Mary)
Roger Toothaker Billerica
Johanna Tyler Andover *
Martha Tyler Andover *
Vincent (f) (III, 880–881) ?
Mercy Wardwell Andover *
Samuel Wardwell Andover convicted E*10
Sarah Wardwell Andover *f
Mary Warren Salem Village *
Sarah Wilds Topsfield convicted E
Ruth Wilford (II, 459) Haverhill
John Willard Salem Village convicted E
Abigail Williams Salem Village
Appendix 269

(if any)
Sarah Wilson, Sr. Andover *

Sarah Wilson, Jr. (I, Andover *
335)
Mary Withridge (II, 493) Salem Village
156 24 Different 30 Convictions
Communities 44 Confessions
19 Executions
Notes:aaccusation withdrawn; bescaped from prison; creprieved after confession; dreprieved

because pregnant; emay have saved her life by confessing, although no record of her doing so
survives; fconvicted by Superior Court of Judicature in Jan. 1693; reprieved by governor;
g
withdrew his confession and so was executed.
Notes
1 This appendix is reprinted from Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion:
Magicand Religion in Early New England (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992), Appendix B, “Persons accused during the Salem Witch Hunt.”
Godbeer gathered the information from Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum,
eds., The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Docu-
ments of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak, 3 vols. (New York: Da Capo Press,
1977). It is reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press.
2 aaccusation withdrawn
3 *= confession
4 E = executed
5 bescaped from prison
6 creprieved after confession
7 dreprieved because pregnant
8 emay have saved her life by confessing, although no record of her doing so
survives
9 fconvicted by Superior Court of Judicature in Jan. 1693; reprieved by governor
10 gwithdrew his confession and so was executed
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Index
A Black, Mary, 120, 123, 264a

Abbey, Benjamin, 186 Blanchard, Elizabeth, 255, 256
Abbey, Samuel, 105 Booth, Elizabeth, 148, 189, 240
Abbott, Nehemiah, Jr., 120, 123, 124 Bradbury, Mary, 152, 159n.51, 189,
Addington, Isaac, 103, 166, 241 206, 265a
Ady, Thomas, 183 Bradstreet, Dudley, 152, 153, 178
afflicted, the, guilt of, 221–223 Bradstreet, John, 157
Alden, John, 241, 264a: Bradstreet, Simon, 103, 163, 208
charged, 148–149 Brattle, Thomas:
escapes, 149, 178, 179, 205 account of Salem witch trials, 178,
Allen, James, 95, 101, 114, 236 186–187, 207–208
Andover, Massachusetts cases, 151–157, on the afflicted girls, 204–207
178 on the August 19 hangings, 187–188
Andrew, Daniel, 65, 66, 68, 96, 102, 146, on the confessions, 196, 200, 204
178, 264a on the escapees, 178
Andros, Edmund, 53, 126, 161, 162, on opposition to the trials, 204–207
164, 211 Bridges, Mary Jr., 197, 265a
Bromage, Hannah, 197, 265a
B Buckley, Sarah, 144, 265a
Barker, William Sr., 153–155, 197, 200, Burroughs, George, 120, 122, 128, 129,
247–248, 264a 139, 142, 145, 154, 155, 184, 187, 188,
Baxter, Richard: 196, 198, 211, 222, 228, 243, 246, 249,
Certainty of the World of Spirits, 250, 265a
The, 76, 195 Minister to Salem village, 64–65, 107
Bayley, James, 64, 71 tried, 131–133, 182–183
Bayley, Mary, 71 Burt, Ann, 112
Belcher, Jonathan, 50
Benham, Winifred, 255 C
Bernard, Richard, 76, 165 Calef, Robert:
Bernard, Thomas, 152, 208 account of trials, 80, 149, 157, 170,
Bibber, Sarah, 68, 91, 176, 264a 196, 203, 216, 247
Bishop, Bridget (Oliver), 127–128, 150, on August 19 hangings, 187–188
136n.32, 199, 228, 250, 264a on Giles Cory, 192–194
charged, 117–120 on Cotton Mather, 187, 232–233
tried, 166–172 More Wonders of the Invisible
Bishop, Edward, 73, 97, 118, 121, 170, World, 232–233
198, 264a Canon Episcopi, 9–10, 12
Bishop, Sarah, 73, 116, 118, 120, 121, Candle in the Dark, A, 183, 201n.5
122, 178, 257, 264a Candy, 136n.55, 265a
280 Index
Carrier, Andrew, 196, 265a Daston, Sarah, 216
Carrier, Martha, 150–152, 155, 182, Devil (Satan):
185–186, 228, 249, 265a as related to the cumulative concept
Carrier, Richard, 150, 265a in England, 22–26
Carrier, Sarah, 150, 213, 265a in New England, 35–43
Carrier, Thomas, 114, 150, 265a of witchcraft, 7–8
Carver, Mrs., 230–232 “The Devil and His Instruments,”
Cary, Elizabeth, 146–148, 205, See Parris, Samuel
247, 265a Discourse on the Damned Art of
Cary, Nathaniel, 146–147, 178, 248 Witchcraft, A, See Perkins, William
Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Dudley, Joseph, 211–212, 245, 249
Spirits, See Mather, Increase
Certainty of the World of Spirits, The, E
See Baxter, Richard Eames, Rebecca, 189, 197–199, 266a
Cheever, Ezekiel, 78, 87, 189 English, Mary, 116, 266a
Cheever, Samuel, 236 charged, 120, 124–128
“Christ’s Fidelity the Only Shield escapes, 128, 146, 178, 205, 247–248
Against Satan’s Malignity,” See English, Philip, 66, 107, 124–126,
Lawson, Deodot 178, 266a
Churchill, Sarah, 72, 111, 222, 240, 265a charged, 126–128, 148
accusations against: escapes, 128, 146, 178, 205, 247–250
Bridget Bishop, 118 Essay for the Recording of Illustrious
George Jacobs Sr., 139–141, 185 Providences, An, See Mather, Increase
the Procter children, 114 Esty, Mary (Easty), 95, 110n.61, 116,
recantation, 142, 185, 196 124, 203–204, 229
Clark, Peter, 256 charged, 104–105, 120
Clinton, Rachel, 172 tried, 188–190
Cloyce, Peter, 96, 101, 234
Cloyce, Sarah,
F
charged, 95, 101–102
Faulkner, Abigail, 213, 245, 266a
tried, 103
Faulkner, Dorothy, 213, 266a
Confessions of 1692, The, 196–200
Fisk, Thomas, 176
Cook, Elisha, 238
Fletcher, Benjamin, 148
Cory, Giles (Corey), 87, 92, 108n.1, 117,
Foster, Ann, 152, 154, 155, 189, 213,
127, 239
264, 266a
charged, 93–94
excommunication, 193, 23
ordeal of, 190–193, 246–248 G
Cory, Martha (Corey), 96, 98, 103, 105, Gallows Hill, 170, 177, 186, 190, 194
113, 114, 117, 127, 150 Gedney, Bartholomew, 65, 101, 149, 164
charged, 87–89, 91–94, 188–190 Glanvill, Joseph, 76
excommunication, 189, 239 Sadducismus Triumphatus (Saddu-
Corwin, George, 170, 192, 247–248 cism Triumphant), 85n58
Corwin, Jonathan, 76, 165, 205–206, 235 Glanville, John, 26
Court of Oyer and Terminer: Glover, Mary, 46–50
advised by Boston area ministers, Good, Dorothy, 87, 94, 114, 117, 109n.1
171–172 Good, Sarah, 74–76, 94, 106, 122, 130,
established, 4, 163–166 213, 230, 249, 266a
Crucible, The, See Miller, Arthur executed, 177
tried, 78–83, 173
D Good, William, 74
Dane, Francis, 185–186, 189, 206, Goodwin children, 46, 48–50
208, 215 Great European Witch-hunt, see Witch-
Danforth, Thomas, 103, 163, 208, 215 hunts, in Europe
Index 281
Green, Joseph, 238–239 Rebecca Nurse, 96
Griggs, William, 73, 82 Sarah Osburn (Osborne), 74–76
Tituba, 76, 80–81
H
Hale, John, 48, 55, 70–71, 73–74, 83, I
134, 147, 196, 203–204, 235, 241 Illustrious Providences, An Essay for the
A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Recording of, See Mather, Increase
Witchcraft, 243, 245–246 Indian, John, 74, 103, 104, 121, 147
role in Bridget and Sarah Bishop Indians, 64, 126, 129, 133, 148, 162,
cases, 118, 121 164, 230
Salem witch trials: Ingersoll, Nathaniel, 66, 102
initial assessment of, 48, 55, 70–71, Ingersoll, Sarah, 112, 141
73, 83 Inquisition, the, 10–11, 15, 18, 20,
Hathorne, John, 65, 776, 96, 227, 250 32–33
presides over preliminary hearings, Institoris, see Kramer, Heinrich
76, 78 “Is Not This a Brand Plucked Out of
for Bridget Bishop, 118 the Burning,” See Mather, Cotton
for Martha Carrier, 151
for Martha Cory (Corey), 91 J
for Mary Esty (Easty), 104 Jacobs, George Jr., 140–142, 146,
for Dorcas Hoar, 134 185, 267a
for William Hobbs, 122 Jacobs, George Sr., 111, 139, 182, 217,
for Rebecca Nurse, 97 247, 249, 267a
for Mary Warren, 115 burial, 189
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 250 charged, 140–142
Herrick, Joseph, 82 tried, 185
Herrick, Mary, 203–204
Higginson, John, 83, 94, 101, 176, Jacobs, Margaret, 139, 141–143, 185,
227, 243 217, 267a
role in Samuel Parris dispute with Jacobs, Rebecca, 142–143, 267a
opponents, 64–65, 235 Jeremiad sermons, 53, 56, 194
Hoar, Dorcas, 73, 134–135, 189, 213, Johnson, Abigail, 213, 267a
247, 266a Johnson, Elizabeth Jr., 150, 215,
Hobbs, Abigail, 129, 134, 222, 249, 266a 251, 267a
charged, 117, 119–120
confesses, 120, 131, 188–189 K
Hobbs, Deliverance, 119, 122, 139, 169, King Philip’s War, 52–55
176, 177, 266a Knapp, Elizabeth, 46–50
Hobbs, William, 120–123, 266a Kramer, Heinrich, 12–13, 19, 27n.19
Hopkins, Matthew, 25–26, 34, 198
How, Elizabeth, 228, 246, 266a L
charged, 150, 152, 173 Lacey, Mary Jr., 152, 154–156, 198,
executed, 177 213, 267a
tried, 173, 206 Lacey, Mary Sr., 152, 154–156,
Hubbard, Elizabeth, 73, 108, 114, 189, 267a
221, 267a Lawson, Deodat, 112, 120, 129, 130,
accusations against: 132, 144, 187, 199, 206, 212
Bridget Bishop, 170 Brief and True Narrative, A, 227
Martha Cory (Corey), 189 “Christ’s Fidelity the Only Shield,”
Mary Esty (Easty), 105 89, 91, 99–101, 105, 207, 209, 222
Mary Warren, 115 minister to Salem village, 64–65
Sarah Good, 74, 76, 79, 82 visits Salem village during trials,
Dorcas Hoar, 134 90, 96
282 Index
legal procedures, 77–78 role in appointment of Governor
Lewis, Mercy, 71, 72, 120, 148, 221, William Phips, 161–163
222, 241, 267a Maule, Thomas, 204
accusations against: “Meditations for Peace,” See Parris,
Nehemiah Abbott, 123 Samuel
Bridget Bishop, 170 Memorable Providences, Relating to
George Burroughs, 133 Witchcrafts and Possessions, See
Sarah Cloyce, 103 Mather, Cotton
Martha Cory (Corey), 88, 189 Miller, Arthur, 111, 260–261
Mary Esty (Easty), 104–105 Modest Inquiry into the Nature of
Mary English, 124 Witchcraft, A, See Hale, John
Elizabeth Procter (Proctor), 112 Moody, Joshua, 114, 128, 184
Bray Wilkins, 144 More Wonders of the Invisible World,
See Calef, Robert
M N
Magistrates and the Court of Oyer and Native Americans, see Indians,
Terminer, the guilt of, 217–221 Newton, Thomas, 107, 165–167, 186,
Magnalia Christi Americana, See 215–216
Mather, Cotton Noyes, Nicholas, 65, 73, 91, 101, 141,
Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of 177, 190, 206, 208, 228, 249–250
Witches), 12, 18–20, 22, 24, 27n.21 Giles Cory (Corey) excommunication,
Martin, Susannah, 173–174, 177, 199, 193
206, 228, 250, 267a Rebecca Nurse excommunication,
Mather, Cotton, 53, 71, 101, 149, 151, 176–177
162, 165–166, 174, 183, 186, 210, 218, role in Samuel Parris dispute with
222, 229, 239, 141, 246 opponents, 235–236
at George Burroughs’ hanging, Nurse, Francis, 68, 95–96
187–188 Nurse, Rebecca, 94–99, 101–105, 114,
Robert Calef criticism, 232–233 117, 122, 143, 150, 152, 171, 173–176,
Mrs. Carver case, 230–231 178, 182, 188, 197, 216, 229, 234, 237,
advises Court of Oyer and Terminer, 240, 267a
171–172, 219, 233 excommunication, 176–177, 239
Mary Glover case, 48–50 Nurse, Samuel, 95, 234, 236, 239
“Is This Not a Brand Plucked Out of Nurse, Sarah, 176
the Burning,” 99–101
Magnalia Christi Americana, 230 O
Memorable Providences, Relating to Oliver, Thomas, 118
Witchcrafts and Possessions, 44, 46 Osborn, Sarah (Osborne),
portrait, 229 74–75, 79, 82, 106, 122, 213,
Margaret Rule case, 231–232 264, 267a
on the Salem witch trials, 107, 196, Osgood, Mary, 153, 267a
200, 221
Mercy Short case, 230
Wonders of the Invisible World, P
194–196, 209, 220, 227–229 Parker, Alice, 188, 190, 250, 267a
Mather, Increase, 52, 114, 156, 184, 204, Parker, Mary, 188, 190, 247, 249,
208, 233, 237–238 267a
advises Court of Oyer and Terminer, Parker, Sarah, 199, 267a
171–172, 209–212 Parris, Elizabeth, 107, 108
Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil accusations against:
Spirits, 209–211, 229 Sarah Good, 76, 79
Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Sarah Osborn (Osborne), 76
Providences, An, 46, 210 Tituba, 76
Index 283
Parris, Samuel, 55–56, 105, 144, 151, Bridget Bishop, 170
189, 196, 204–208, 216–217, 220, 223 George Burroughs, 120, 129,
“Christ Knows How Many Devils 131, 133
There Are in His Church,” Sarah Cloyce, 103
101–102 Giles Cory (Corey), 193
“The Devil and His Instruments,” Martha Cory (Corey), 87–88,
195–196 91, 189
“Meditations for Peace,” 236–237 Mary Esty (Easty), 104–105
portrait, 67 Mary English, 124
response to first signs of witchcraft, Dorothy Good, 94
70–74 Sarah Good, 74, 76, 79, 81
role in Salem village factionalism, 3, Dorcas Hoar, 134–135
65–70, 234–239, 252n.51 Abigail Hobbs, 120
peine forte et dure (hard and forceful George Jacobs Sr., 141
punishment), See Cory, Giles Rebecca Nurse, 97, 174–175
Perkins, William, 76, 83, 213 Sarah Osburn (Osborne), 76, 81
Discourse on the Damned Art of Elizabeth Procter (Proctor),
Witchcraft, A, 76–77 113, 115
Phips, William, 3, 161–163 John Procter (Proctor), 113
dismisses Court of Oyer and Tituba, 76
Terminer, 208–212 John Willard, 145
establishes Court of Oyer and repents, 240, 242
Terminer, 163–165 Putnam, Ann Sr., 71, 111–112, 175,
establishes Superior Court of 221, 240
Judicature, 215 accusations against:
Pike, Robert, 206 Martha Cory (Corey), 189
Pitcher, Moll, 258 Rebecca Nurse, 95–97, 99
Pope, Bethshaa, 89 Elizabeth Procter (Proctor), 112
Porter, Benjamin, 63, 146 John Willard, 145
Porter, Elizabeth, 64, 96–97 Putnam, Edward, 76, 87–89, 96, 189,
Porter family faction, 96, 126, 146, 233
175, 178 Putnam family/faction, 63, 66, 69, 71,
Porter, Israel, 63, 66, 96–97, 111 95–96
Porter, John, 63 Putnam, John Jr., 103, 144–145
Porter, Joseph, 63, 65, 68, 146 Putnam, John Sr., 63–66, 75
Porter, Sarah, 146 Putnam, Jonathan, 96
Post, Mary, 215, 267a Putnam, Joseph, 64, 68, 111
Post, Susannah, 159n.68, 267a Putnam, Nathaniel, 63–64, 66, 96, 123,
Procter, Benjamin (Proctor), 114, 175–176, 189
246, 268a Putnam, Thomas Jr., 65, 69, 76, 221
Procter, Elizabeth (Proctor), 112–117, Putnam, Thomas Sr., 63, 64
150, 182–185, 215, 217, 245, 247,
249, 268a
R
Procter, John (Proctor), 93, 111–117,
Reed, Wilmot, 188, 190, 250, 268a
150, 157, 159n.58, 182–185, 196, 206,
repents, 240–245
217, 229, 245–246, 249, 268a
“Return of Several Ministers
Procter, Joseph (Proctor), 114
Consulted,” 171–172
Procter, Sarah (Sarah), 114, 268a
Richards, John, 164–165
Procter, William (Proctor), 114, 268a
Rule, Margaret, 231–233
Pudeator, Ann, 188, 190, 250, 268a
Putnam, Ann Jr., 69, 85n.37, 108,
S
110n.69, 114, 123, 152, 221
Sadducismus Triumphatus (Sadducism
accusations against:
Triumphant), See Glanvill, Joseph
John Alden, 148
284 Index
Salem Village: Short, Mercy, 230, 241
before the trials, 61–70 Sibley, Mary, 94, 102
as a result of the trials, 233–240 Some Miscellany Observations on
Salem witch trials, the: Our Present Debates Respecting
the accused, 30, 37–43 Witchcrafts, See Willard, Samuel
the accusers, 36–37 spectral evidence:
confessions, 196–200 defended, 100, 210, 219, 229
contemporary symbolic importance, defined, 42, 77–78
259–261 questioned, 171–172, 203–207, 210,
Court of Oyer and Terminer, 212, 236, 243
163–166, 208–212 Sprenger, Jacob, 12
escapees, 178–179, 205 Stoughton, William, 54, 132, 163, 207,
jails, 212–214, 216–217 227–228, 247–248
legal matters: presides over the Court of Oyer and
pardons, 245–246 Terminer, 164, 204–205, 244
peine forte et dure (hard and presides over the Superior Court of
forceful punishment), See Cory, Judicature, 215, 233, 244
Giles Superior Court of Judicature, 215–216
procedures for preliminary
hearings, 41–42, 76–78 T
reversals of attainders, 245–246 Tarbell, John, 234, 237, 239
settlements after the trials, Tituba, 70, 74, 76, 83, 84n.34, 196,
241–246 217, 268a
stays of execution, 213 confession, 80–82
use of torture, 114, 183–184, recantation, 204
196–197 Toothaker, Mary, 150, 160n.38,
opposition to, 204–208 197, 268a
prisoners released from jail, 212–214 Toothaker Roger, 213, 264a, 268a
recantations (and repenting), 240–245 Tyler, Martha, 156, 268a
social origins, 62–64
statistics, appendix, 264–269 V
Superior Court of Judicature, Varish, Rudolph, 211
214–216
Saltonstall, Nathaniel, 164, 171–172, W
208 Walcott, Mary, 71–72, 89, 240
Satan redefined, 7–8 accusations against:
Scott, Margaret, 188, 190, 250, 268a John Alden, 148
Scott, Reginald, 22, 24–25 Bridget Bishop, 119–120
Selijns, Henry, 211 Sarah Cloyce, 103
Sergeant, Peter, 164 Martha Cory (Corey), 91, 94
Sewell, Samuel, 103, 114, 132, 149, 164, Mary Esty (Easty), 104–105
187, 212, 215, 227, 238, 241–242, Mary English, 124
244, 250 Dorothy Good, 94
Sewall, Stephen, 165, 227–228, 249 Dorcas Hoar, 134–135
Sheldon, Susannah: 72, 222, 241, 268a George Jacobs Sr., 141
accusations against: Rebecca Nurse, 96, 175
Bridget Bishop, 118, 169 Procter children (Proctor), 114
George Burroughs, 133 John Willard, 144
Martha Carrier, 151 Walker, Timothy, 256
Mary English, 127 Wardwell, Mercy, 197, 268
Philip English, 125–127 Wardwell, Samuel, 153, 156, 188,
Dorcas Hoar, 134–135 190, 202n.58, 215, 247, 268a
John Willard, 145, 185 Wardwell, Sarah, 268a
Index 285
Warren, Mary, 72, 111–112, 116, Martha Cory (Corey), 89, 190
221, 241, 268a Mary Esty (Easty), 104
accusations against: Philip English, 125
John Alden, 148 Sarah Good, 74, 79
Bridget Bishop, 169 Dorcas Hoar, 134–135
George Burroughs, 134 George Jacobs Sr., 140–141
Giles Cory (Corey), 117, 191 Rebecca Nurse, 96, 175
Martha Cory (Corey), 117 Sarah Osborn (Osborne),
Elizabeth Procter (Proctor), 74, 80
116–117, 185 Elizabeth Procter (Proctor),
John Procter (Proctor), 116, 185 113, 115
Procter children (Proctor), 114 Procter children (Proctor), 114
recantation, 115–117 Tituba, 74
Watkins, Mary, 216, 255 Winthrop, John, 35, 37, 43–44, 51
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 258 Winthrop, Wait, 164, 215, 238
Wiesel, Elie, 260 Wise, John, 111, 184, 206
Wigglesworth, Michael, 54 Witches’ Hill (see Gallows Hill)
Wilds, Sarah, 120–121, 123, 150, 173, witchcraft
177, 268a defined, 6
Wilkins, Bray, 143–144 origins of, 2–3, 6–7, 8–10
Wilkins family, 143 in seventeenth-century New
Wilkins, Thomas, 143 England, 34–43
Willard, John, 105, 143–145, 150, witches
185, 213, 268a after the Salem witch trials,
Willard, Samuel, 101, 114, 128, 171, 257–259
184, 208, 210, 236 Christian images of, 2, 6–7,
Elizabeth Knapp case, 46–48 8–10
Some Miscellany Observations on pre-Christian image of, 2, 7
Our Present Debates Respecting profile of, 6–8, 9–10, 12–13
Witchcrafts, 207 witch-hunts
turns against Salem witch trials, in the American colonies,
207, 220, 241 31–34
visits John Alden, 149 in England, 21–26
Williams, Abigail, 70, 89, 91, 105, in Europe, 11–21
108, 122, 238, 241, 268a in New England, 34–43
accusations against: symbolic, 259–261
John Alden, 148 Wizard of Oz, The, 258
Bridget Bishop, 170 Wonders of the Invisible World, See
George Burroughs, 133 Mather, Cotton
Sarah Cloyce, 103

The Story of The Salem Witch Trials

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The Story of the Salem Witch Trials

Providing an accessible and comprehensive overview, The Story of the Salem

“Bryan Le Beau’s exploration of the Salem Witch-Hunt is a highly accessible

ISBN: 978-0-367-63777-4 (hbk)

List of Illustrations viii

Introduction to the Third Edition 1

Between June 10 and September 22, 1692, in Salem, Massachusetts, more

The people of Salem believed in witches. It is a simple proposition, some-

The Origins of European Witchcraft

The Development of European Witchcraft

The people of medieval and early modern Europe believed in sorcery or

The Canon Episcopi rejected the reality of people’s perception of witches –

The Great European Witch-Hunt

All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable. …

At the height of the Great European Witch-Hunt, especially on the Con-

A Summary View of Witch-Hunts in England

The purpose of Chapter 1 was to provide a brief overview of the Great

Witch-Hunts in Seventeenth-Century America

Witch-Hunts in Seventeenth-Century New England

Some Notable Witch Trials in Seventeenth-Century New England

Sometimes they [the children] would be deaf, sometimes dumb, and

For think not, O Backsliders, in your heart,

Numerous attempts have been made to explain why the witch-hunt of

A Glimpse at Salem’s Past

As a result of the village’s continued quarreling, as well as his unseemly

The First Signs of the Devil

Map 3.1 The geography of witchcraft: Salem village, 1692.

The Hearings Begin

Figure 3.2 A painting by T. H. Matteson, titled Examination of a Witch, 1855.

The Cases of Martha and Giles Cory and Dorothy Good

Salem Village Map 1692 in

Salem Witchcraft (1867)

The Case of Rebecca Nurse

Lawson urged those in attendance not to be divided, not to “rashly censure”

Sarah Cloyce Is Charged

The Pace Quickens

The Cases of Elizabeth and John Procter

Mary Warren Tries to Recant

Bridget Bishop and Abigail Hobbs Are Charged

MAGISTRATES: How long have you been a witch?

The Ordeal Begins for Mary and Philip English

The “Black Minister” Is Apprehended

Dorcas Hoar Is Jailed

The Case of George Jacobs Sr.

John Willard Changes Sides

The Carys Escape

John Alden Is Arrested

To Boston Alden was carried by a constable. No bail would be taken

In September, Alden escaped to Duxbury, Massachusetts, where his relatives

The Andover Witch-Hunt

When she refused, Emerson threatened to withdraw, declaring her “undone,

The Court of Oyer and Terminer Is Established

Bridget Bishop Is Tried

The Court Completes Its First Session

Immediately there did appear to me six children in winding-sheets,

The First Mass Execution and Its Eﬀects

The Case of George Burroughs

The Procters Are Condemned

Neither do we remember any such thoughts in us concerning them, or

In the second statement, the signatories oﬀered a briefer conﬁrming para-

The Hangings of August 19

When he [Burroughs] was cut down, he was dragged by a halter to a

Giles Cory was excommunicated. The cause of it was that he being